Genesis 17

¹⁵ And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” ¹⁹ God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. ²⁰ As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. ²¹ But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

Genesis 18

¹ And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. ² He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth ³ and said, “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. ⁴ Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, ⁵ while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.”⁶ And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷ And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. ⁸ Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. ⁹ They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” ¹⁰ The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.¹¹ Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. ¹² So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” ¹³ The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁵ But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.” 

Laughter is infectious. There is something about hearing somebody laugh that makes us want to laugh. A prime example of this would be Tom Hanks’ great laughing scene in the 1986 movie The Money Pit. If you have seen the movie, you will remember the scene. In the film, the characters played by Tom Hanks and Shelley Long are a couple who buy a big beautiful house at a very low price, believing they have found the deal of a lifetime. Instead, what they had found was a nightmare. Everything—and I mean everything—is wrong with this house and as the reality of what they had bought settles in their sanity and their bank account are emptied out and crippled. In the scene in question, the couple stand on the second floor and Tom Hanks and Shelley Long—dirty, exhausted, nerves shot—pour two buckets of water into a large bathtub. As they do so, the floor beneath the tub gives way and the entire tub falls into the floor below, shattering into a million pieces. The camera then looks up from below where we see the couple staring down into the hole where the tub once stood. Then it happens: Tom Hanks, holding the bucket, staring down in disbelief, laughs and laughs and laughs. It is an amazing picture of absolute exasperation and mental anguish. The laugh is beyond hysterical, though what lies behind it is less so. Even so, as the weird cacophony of sounds pour out, the viewer cannot help but laugh as well.

Laughter is infectious. Laughter is powerful.

In June 2019 Giovanni Sabato for Scientific American entitled “What’s So Funny? The Science of Why We Laugh.” In this piece, he outlined three of the major theories concerning human laughter:

Perhaps the oldest theory of humor, which dates back to Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers, posits that people find humor in, and laugh at, earlier versions of themselves and the misfortunes of others because of feeling superior.

The 18th century gave rise to the theory of release. The best-known version, formulated later by Sigmund Freud, held that laughter allows people to let off steam or release pent-up “nervous energy.”…

A third long-standing explanation of humor is the theory of incongruity. People laugh at the juxtaposition of incompatible concepts and at defiance of their expectations—that is, at the incongruity between expectations and reality.[1]

It is this last theory, the theory of incongruity that is most intriguing to me for it seems to explain perfectly what is happening with two instances of laughter in Genesis 17 and 18. I am speaking of Abraham’s and Sarah’s laughter at God’s announcement that Sarah will have a child in her old age. Such an announcement did indeed present a “juxtaposition of incompatible concepts” and “the incongruity between expectations and reality.” The incongruity is between (a) God’s announcement of a child to be born and (b) Abraham’s and Sarah’s old age and infertility.

So Abraham and Sarah laugh at the promise, yet the promise stood…and it was fulfilled! Let us consider these amazing promises of God.

What God promises and what God asks tempts the earthly mind to incredulous laughter.

At the core of the laugh of incongruity as it pertains to God is the radical juxtaposition between what God promises and what our earthly eyes see. In other words, what God promises and what God asks tempts the earthly mind to incredulous laughter. There are few more striking examples of this than God’s promise to elderly Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would have a child in her old age. For this reason, we see both Abraham and Sarah laugh at the idea of it in Genesis 17 and 18 respectively.

Genesis 17

¹⁵ And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” ¹⁹ God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. ²⁰ As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. ²¹ But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.”

Genesis 18

¹ And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. ² He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth ³ and said, “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. ⁴ Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, ⁵ while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.”⁶ And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷ And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. ⁸ Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. ⁹ They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” ¹⁰ The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.¹¹ Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. ¹² So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” ¹³ The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁵ But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”

This is the laugh of incongruity. How on earth can this old woman give birth to a child? The very idea of it is crazy from a human perspective. After all, things like this just do not happen. So Abraham and Sarah laugh, it is true, but there is a kind of sadness in their laughter as well. One thinks of Proverbs 14, where we read:

¹³ Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.

This is, to them, too unbelievable. And perhaps to Sarah it almost seemed like a cruel thing for God to say. But here it is nonetheless, God’s promise that it is going to happen.

Early in Genesis 18 the Lord does something that is quite surprising, that has confounded many readers, but that, I believe, is fundamental to what God is trying to accomplish in the hearts of Abraham and Sarah. I am referring to the fact that God eats food in Genesis 18. After Abraham has a meal prepared for the three mysterious travelers, we read:

⁸ Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

“They ate.” Who are these three who ate? According to verse 1 it was “the Lord” who appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre. It was “the Lord” who said in v.10 that when He returned in a year Sarah will have a son. It was “the Lord” who asked, “Why did Sarah laugh?” and “is anything too hard for the Lord?”

These three guests appear to be the Lord and two angels. What we have here then is a theophany. And the Lord eats food! Why is this surprising? It is surprising because this simply does not happen. Robert Candlish explains:

It is a singular instance of condescension—the only recorded instance of the kind before the incarnation. On other occasions, this same illustrious being appeared to the fathers and conversed with them; and meat and drink were brought out to him. But in these cases, he turned the offered banquet into a sacrifice, in the smoke of which he ascended heavenward (Judges vi. 18-24, xiii. 15-21). Here he personally accepts the patriarch’s hospitality, and partakes of his fare,—a greater wonder than the other; implying more intimate and gracious friendship,—more unreserved familiarity. He sits under his tree, and shares his common meal.[2]

The provocative question is why? Why does the Lord eat? I believe that the Lord did this surprising act of eating in order to demonstrate that He could act in the realm of the physical, that, indeed, He is Lord of the physical as well as the spiritual, that the gulf between those two realities is really no so wide, and that He was capable of doing what He said He would do as far as Sarah’s womb was concerned.

Our God, in other words, does not merely act in the realm of the ethereal, the spiritual, the vague “out there.” No, our God is the God who works here and now in the raw physicality of the world. R. Kent Hughes has made an interesting observation about faith.

It is so easy to say we believe in something that is far-off—like Heaven. But when we are asked to believe that God will do a certain thing within a specific time, we find believing much more difficult.[3]

This is true, is it not? Abraham and Sarah were not atheists. They knew that God was there. And they knew that God could act. And they knew that God was powerful. But this wild idea of Sarah, a post-menopausal lady with an old man for a husband, would have a child was just too much. E.A. Speiser writes of Sarah that she “is depicted as down-to-earth to a fault, with her curiosity, her impulsiveness, and her feeble attempt at deception.”[4] Yes, “down-to-earth to a fault.” On the earth, stuff like this just does not happen. Faith is safe when it can be kept out there, but do you believe that God can really act here and now?

It is interesting, when reading scripture, to see how God’s promises and words are often met with laughter and mocking. Consider two examples. The first is from Matthew 9 when Jesus brings a little girl back to life.

²³ And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him.

The laughed at Him. It was the laugh of incongruity arising from the juxtaposition of Jesus’ words that the girl was sleeping and the reality that the crowd had seen her dead. So they laughed! Dead people do not just wake up, the natural mind says. But Jesus says otherwise. Consider, too, the reaction of the sophisticated Athenian crowd to Paul’s preaching of the gospel in Acts 17. They listened attentively while he preached, until he came to the idea of resurrection from the dead. Luke writes:

³² Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”

Here again, the laugh of incongruity. The dead do not rise. But Paul said that Jesus did!

Here is the great problem with Christians who obsess over intellectual respectability in the halls of academia or in the minds of the intellectual elites of our day: what Jesus says, what Jesus does, and what Jesus asks of us simply cannot be harmonized with what we see in day-to-day life. Old women do not have babies. Little girls who have died are not just sleeping. And a Messiah who was crucified and buried will not walk out of a tomb.

But here we have in the pages of scripture examples of these very things happening. To be a follower of Jesus is therefore to make a choice: will you believe?

Yet trust in the character of God opens the door to daring belief and a life of indescribable adventure.

Put another way, trust in the character of God opens the door to daring belief and a life of indescribable adventure. I would like to propose to you a radical suggestion: that we believe God and His word with reckless abandon, indeed, that we stake our very lives on it. Abraham laughed. Sarah laughed. But in Hebrews 11 we see the rest of the story. Listen closely:

¹¹ By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. ¹² Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

We are told two things about Sarah: (1) she had faith and (2) she considered God faithful. In other words, she dared to believe and she did so on the basis not of her ability to see it but on the basis of her conviction that God is good and faithful and His word can be trusted. She dared to trust that the answer to God’s question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” was “No! NO! Nothing is too hard for the Lord!”

Gerhard Von Rad beautifully wrote of God’s question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”, that “this word reposes in the story like a precious stone in a priceless setting, and its significance surpasses the cosy patriarchal milieu of the narrative; it is a heuristic witness to God’s omnipotent saving will.”[5]

Yes, this is the question for us: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Is it? Walter Brueggemann writes:

That is the question around which this confrontation revolves. It is an open question, one that waits for an answer. It is the question which surfaces everywhere in the Bible. We must say it is the fundamental question every human person must answer. And how it is answered determines everything else.[6]

It does. It really does. Whether or not you think anything is too hard for God determines “everything else.” So I ask you:

Do you believe that your cancer is too hard for God?

Do you believe your broken marriage is too hard for God?

Do you believe your wayward child is too hard for God?

Do you believe that workplace situation is too hard for God?

Do you believe your addiction is too hard for God?

Do you believe your hopelessness is too hard for God?

Do you believe that you beginning to heal from what was done to you is too hard for God?

Do you believe your bitterness is too hard for God?

Do you believe our political situation is too hard for God?

Do you believe anything is too hard for God?

If so, you will be doomed to despair and dismissive laughter. But if you dare to believe that nothing is too hard for God, then you will begin to experience a walk with the Lord and peace that you heretofore could not have envisioned. If you dare to believe, your life with Jesus truly will become one of amazing adventure and hope and joy!

Is anything too hard for God?

Trust! Believe! Take the hand of Jesus. Nothing is too hard for God!

 

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-so-funny-the-science-of-why-we-laugh/

[2] Quoted in Hughes, p.254.

[3] R. Kent Hughes, Genesis. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p.250.

[4] E.A. Speiser, Genesis. The Anchor Bible. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), p.131.

[5] Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis. Revised Edition. The Old Testament Library. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1972), p.207.

[6] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Interpretation. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), p.159.