Did Abraham Laugh at God’s Promise?

00:00:00.000 | Well, did Abraham laugh God off in unbelief?

00:00:08.240 | It's a great question and it comes to us from Jessica who lives in the Netherlands.

00:00:13.000 | "Dear Pastor John, hello.

00:00:14.680 | In Genesis, we read of Abraham going along with Sarah's plan with Hagar to make Ishmael

00:00:19.800 | his heir."

00:00:20.800 | That's Genesis 16, verses 1 to 16.

00:00:23.320 | "Later, when God tells him, he and Sarah will bear a child at 190 years old, respectively,

00:00:29.960 | he seems to laugh it off in unbelief."

00:00:32.440 | That's Genesis 17, 17.

00:00:34.680 | "Therefore, how is it that in Romans chapter 4, Paul celebrates Abraham's unwavering faith?"

00:00:39.520 | Does it tell us anything about how God views our own wavering faith in the end, Pastor

00:00:44.560 | John?

00:00:45.560 | What would you say to Jessica?

00:00:47.000 | This is a good example of how careful we should be not to read into a text something from

00:00:56.700 | our own experience that makes an interpretation seem likely, but rather let the context decide

00:01:06.340 | whether it's likely or not.

00:01:08.560 | So the question is, did Abraham's laughter in Genesis 17, 17 signify the kind of weakened

00:01:18.380 | faith or unbelieving doubt, wavering as she calls it, because that's the way it's translated

00:01:24.920 | in Romans, that Paul said Abraham did not have?

00:01:30.760 | Is Genesis 17, 17 in conflict with what Paul says?

00:01:36.560 | So the Old Testament context goes like this.

00:01:40.060 | This is Genesis 17, 15 following.

00:01:42.420 | "God said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name.'"

00:01:50.340 | Is somebody chopping down a tree?

00:01:51.860 | Yes, they're sawing somewhere.

00:01:52.860 | I hope it's not one of my trees.

00:01:59.380 | Well stop now.

00:02:01.060 | Let's see if we can continue.

00:02:02.500 | Go ahead and pick it up where you left off.

00:02:04.900 | The Old Testament context goes like this.

00:02:06.980 | This is Genesis 17, 15 to 17.

00:02:10.220 | "God said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but

00:02:18.220 | Sarai shall be her name.

00:02:20.260 | I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.'"

00:02:25.260 | Now this is at 90 years old for her and barren all her life, and now postmenopausal, according

00:02:34.180 | to 1811.

00:02:35.180 | "I will bless her, and she shall become nations, kings of peoples shall come from her.

00:02:44.580 | Then Abraham fell on his face."

00:02:46.740 | This is the key verse.

00:02:47.740 | This is verse 17.

00:02:48.740 | "Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to

00:02:54.900 | a man who is a hundred years old?

00:02:57.380 | Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?'"

00:03:01.540 | Now here's what Paul says about Abraham's faith at that time, and the reason this matters

00:03:09.940 | for us is that Paul makes clear in Romans 4.23 that these words were not spoken just

00:03:18.220 | for Abraham, but for us also, so that the righteousness that was imputed to him might

00:03:23.180 | be imputed to us through faith alone as well.

00:03:26.720 | So this is not a merely marginal illustration for Paul.

00:03:32.140 | This is central to our own faith.

00:03:34.300 | So here's Paul's description of Abraham's response to God at that time.

00:03:39.780 | Here's Romans 4.17.

00:03:41.340 | "God says to Abraham, 'I have made you the father of many nations in the presence

00:03:47.940 | of the God in whom you believed,'" referring back to 15.6 of Genesis, "who gives life

00:03:56.420 | to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

00:04:01.020 | In hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations, as he had

00:04:07.340 | been told, 'So shall your offspring be.'

00:04:11.420 | He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since

00:04:18.380 | he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's

00:04:23.700 | womb.

00:04:24.700 | No unbelief made him waver."

00:04:27.580 | Now literally the translation there is, "He did not doubt in unbelief concerning the promise

00:04:34.480 | of God, but he grew strong."

00:04:37.420 | Literally he was strengthened—passive voice—"he was strengthened in faith, giving glory to

00:04:44.020 | God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

00:04:47.860 | That is why faith was counted to him as righteousness."

00:04:52.660 | Now that's the end of Paul's assessment of Abraham's faith there in Genesis 17.

00:04:58.660 | So six times Paul affirms Abraham's faith in response to God's promise that he would

00:05:05.620 | have an heir from his own 100-year-old body and from Sarah's 90-year-old barren body.

00:05:13.460 | One, he says, the presence of God in whom he believed.

00:05:18.260 | Two, in hope he believed against hope.

00:05:21.100 | Three, he did not weaken in faith.

00:05:23.900 | Four, he did not doubt in unbelief.

00:05:26.380 | Five, he was strengthened in faith.

00:05:28.820 | Six, he was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

00:05:33.260 | That's amazing.

00:05:34.260 | That is really clear, right?

00:05:35.940 | You know what Paul thinks anyway about Abraham's faith from Genesis 17.

00:05:42.620 | Now here's an interesting possible confirmation before we turn to the Old Testament context

00:05:48.260 | for a minute.

00:05:49.420 | Here's an interesting confirmation from Jesus in John 8, 56.

00:05:54.780 | Jesus says to the Jewish leaders, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

00:06:03.100 | He saw it and was glad."

00:06:09.340 | What does gladness refer to when Jesus says Abraham saw the day of Christ and was glad?

00:06:18.660 | Could it be the laughter of Genesis 17?

00:06:24.420 | God gave Abraham a glimpse of Christ in the sense that Genesis 17, 1 to 19 says repeatedly

00:06:35.420 | six times that Abraham would have offspring of his own who would be the heir of the promise.

00:06:44.860 | And we know that Paul in Galatians saw that offspring as Christ.

00:06:50.900 | So I just can't help but wonder when Jesus said, "He saw my day and was glad," he might

00:06:58.020 | have had in mind, "He saw my day in the promises of Genesis 17 and he laughed aloud with gladness."

00:07:08.420 | Well, I can't prove that.

00:07:10.460 | But what is clear is that Paul sees Abraham's faith as strong and exemplary for us, even

00:07:18.820 | though not perfect.

00:07:20.500 | So here's the question.

00:07:22.300 | Whether the clues in Genesis are sufficient to say, "Paul got this right."

00:07:28.700 | I mean, that's what Jessica is asking, because when she reads verse 17 of Genesis 17, it

00:07:34.540 | sounds to her like Abraham is just blowing it off, like he's laughing it out of court.

00:07:39.380 | That can't be, which sounds like a wavering of faith, a weakening, a doubting of faith.

00:07:46.020 | So let me just give a list of clues that I think Paul got it right.

00:07:50.540 | In other words, if I ask myself, "What did Paul see?"

00:07:53.960 | In the context, this is what I think he saw.

00:07:57.820 | In Genesis 15, 6, Abraham looked at the stars, listened to God, and believed the promise

00:08:05.760 | that his descendants would be like that.

00:08:07.780 | He says so.

00:08:08.780 | He believed God and God counted it to him as righteousness.

00:08:11.860 | Second, Abraham asks God what evidence God would give him that the covenant would be

00:08:18.300 | kept, and amazingly, in Genesis 15, 18, God acts out a kind of covenant ceremony in which

00:08:25.060 | animals are cut in half and God passes between them as if to say, "May I be cut in pieces

00:08:32.040 | if I don't keep my half of this covenant to make your seed nations."

00:08:37.740 | Third, God renews the promise in Genesis 17, 4 that he would, Abraham would father many

00:08:46.700 | nations and he changes Abraham's name from Abram to Abraham to show how certain this

00:08:53.900 | is.

00:08:54.900 | This is as good as done.

00:08:56.100 | You have a name and Abraham embraces that.

00:08:59.860 | And then fourth, in verse 17, it doesn't just say that Abraham laughed.

00:09:05.660 | This is really significant, I think.

00:09:07.820 | It says he fell on his face.

00:09:10.940 | He had already said that once in verse 3.

00:09:13.900 | He fell on his face and laughed.

00:09:17.120 | And falling on your face before Yahweh is a sign of reverence and respect and awe and

00:09:22.820 | fear.

00:09:23.820 | It's not the posture you would assume if you were cynically laughing off the possibility

00:09:30.380 | of what God just said.

00:09:33.500 | And fifth, finally, as soon as the encounter with God is over in chapter 17, Abraham immediately

00:09:43.340 | obeys the terms of the covenant and has all the males circumcised.

00:09:47.940 | So it seems to me that we have good reason not only from the New Testament but also from

00:09:55.340 | the context of the Old Testament that Abraham's faith really was astonishing.

00:10:00.060 | And when Paul said in Romans 4.20 that Abraham was strengthened—passive voice, strengthened

00:10:09.580 | in his faith, giving glory to God—that passive voice is intended to draw our attention to

00:10:16.060 | the fact that this amazing work of faith in Abraham was not just his doing.

00:10:23.940 | It was the work of God in him.

00:10:26.900 | And that probably is the central lesson for us.

00:10:30.860 | Paul is trying to make clear that sinners like us come into a right relationship with

00:10:39.500 | God by trusting him, believing, having faith, not by working for him.

00:10:47.140 | And even more pointedly, Paul is showing us that this faith itself is a work of God so

00:10:55.900 | that in the end, God gets all the glory, not just because of our faith calling attention

00:11:05.220 | to his total trustworthiness and all sufficiency, but also because the faith itself is a mighty

00:11:13.500 | work of God.

00:11:14.740 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:16.220 | Well, tell us if it was one of your trees.

00:11:18.660 | That was our tree.

00:11:19.660 | Oh my.

00:11:20.660 | Oh, that's like losing a loved one.

00:11:24.260 | How old is that tree?

00:11:25.340 | It was there since we moved in here 40 years ago.

00:11:27.740 | Oh my.

00:11:28.740 | And it must have been diseased.

00:11:29.980 | I saw a green X on it and I thought, "Oh no, no, they've taken it down.

00:11:33.580 | It had a lot of dead branches in it.

00:11:35.460 | That means all my shade in the afternoon is going to disappear, and I will leave a legacy

00:11:40.940 | with a small tree."

00:11:41.940 | Oh man, well, I think your legacy will be more than a sap, Link, but that's still sap.

00:11:47.100 | Well, that's a bummer way to end today's episode, but that's how it's going to end.

00:11:51.580 | Thank you for listening to this unexpectedly interrupted episode.

00:11:55.060 | You can ask a question of your own.

00:11:56.580 | You can search through or browse all 1,600 of our past episodes or subscribe to the podcast.

00:12:00.580 | You can do all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:07.460 | How do we find freedom from worry in this life?

00:12:10.220 | It's a question that we all face, and it's one we're going to talk about next time.

00:12:13.580 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:14.580 | We'll see you back here when we talk about finding freedom from worry.

00:12:18.580 | We'll see you then.

00:12:19.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Did Abraham Laugh at God’s Promise?

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