The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. Amen. Let's go to him again in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for your word. It is the word of life. It feeds us, it strengthens us, it equips us, Lord. It convicts us. And we pray now that you would do all those things, Lord, by this word. Remind us of your steadfast love as our promise-keeping God, and give to us, Lord, a zeal for your name. For we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. No doubt you, like me, cannot stand to wait. One thing I noticed about moving to Hickory, it's been about six years now, and I still, when I pull up to a stoplight, I'm filled with a bit of anxiety because I know I'm gonna be there for like two minutes. I studied traffic engineering in college and I know that this is not right because I see no cars pass, but the light is red. Perhaps as a kid, you were like me as well, All day Christmas Eve is just a terrible, angsty waiting for the night to come, for the morning to come, when you can celebrate, you can open presents, you can enjoy your family and the time you have together. All you mothers who have been pregnant, giving birth to a child, you know as well that waiting can be difficult, it can be painful. As you long for that baby to be born, as you long for that 40th or in some case 41st week to come, so then finally a child can be brought into the world. No doubt some of you can't wait to grow up, can't wait to get older, can't wait to go your own way, can't wait to have those additional responsibilities and privileges that belong to adulthood. We're all like in this cauldron of waiting. It's like our life in many ways. And sometimes you can actually get so distracted by it that your whole life is waiting. You fail to see and realize right now what God is doing. that He's preserved you, He's kept you, He's been with you, He will not leave or forsake you, He's provided exactly what you need for today, that your focus might be on today. Is that not what Jesus said? Sufficient for the day is its own trouble, so do not worry about tomorrow. Why worry about tomorrow? The Lord knows your needs before you ask Him. Rather seek first the Lord's kingdom, and all these things will be added to you. Set your focus on Him for today, and don't look to tomorrow. with anxiety and with this anxious waiting. Now, our look through Abraham and Sarah's life has really been a look at a couple who is waiting for God to fulfill his promises. I remember way back, it's like almost 30 years prior to this passage, God spoke to Abraham and called him out of the land of earth, told him to go to a land that he will show him, where he will use him to be father of nations and to be a blessing to all the nations of earth, that he will give him an offspring, he will provide for him children. He will actually resolve the irony of Abraham's name, which means exalted father, yet he has no children because his wife Sarah is barren. God made these promises and we've seen him and Sarah, Abraham and Sarah cling to these promises throughout many years, often faltering, often becoming very anxious and often giving way to worldly wisdom, to sinful inclination of their hearts, to scheming ways to bring about God's promised blessing apart from his proper time. I'll say all this. because this passage we're looking at this morning, this is the passage where God gives them their heart's desire. This is the passage where their hope, which has been deferred for a long time, which has made their hearts sick, is fulfilled, and it becomes to them a tree of life. This is the words of Proverbs 13, 12. Here we see that the promise-keeping God works out his promises, fulfills them in a supernatural way at the right time, all for the, end of blessing his people with joy, with delight in himself. That's what we'll see as we go through this passage, and that's really the pattern of the sermon. You can follow along in the bulletin. There are four points that will help us through these seven verses that we'll look at together. We'll make some application along the way as well to our own lives and our own waiting for God, our own tendency to perhaps forget his goodness to us as we wait. So let's jump in, let's consider these words. First, let's consider a very broad topic, the very first point here, and that is God who keeps his promises. This is the character trait of the Lord that is on display in these opening chapters of Genesis and Abraham's story in marvelous ways. It's actually highlighted in this passage by what one commentator calls a festive poetic flavor. And it's in verses one and two. Notice how the writer to Genesis, how Moses accounts recounts God's faithfulness to Sarah here. It's poetic. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. That's poetry, that's biblical poetry, Hebraic poetry. It's not rhyming, it doesn't have a particular meter to it, but it does have what is called parallelism, where you say the same thing over and over again to emphasize it, to express delight in it, and here, just the cadence of even the words in English show this parallel statement. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. That's a triumphant announcement of God's faithfulness to his people that he makes good on his promises. And that's perhaps a bit of an understatement if you know the book of Genesis thus far. Not only does God keep his promises, but he actively works to protect his people from messing it up, from botching his whole plan. He's sovereign and he uses his sovereignty in that way to protect his promise. We've seen this on multiple occasions in Abraham and Sarah's life. I mean, go back to even right after he made them the promise in Genesis 12, what did they do? A little famine descended upon the land and they jumped ship. Abraham went to Egypt with the intention of settling there. Tell them you're my wife, he tells Sarah. And it led to this great turmoil with the Pharaoh taking Sarah as his own wife and throws the covenant promise into jeopardy because any children, there would be the natural question, whose is it? And yet God intervenes, God works, and he brings Abraham out of Egypt with many more possessions than he went there with, and he settled them in the land. Once they're in the land after many years pass without a word from God, Sarah concocts a plan, you know, here's Hagar, my servant, why don't you take her as a wife and raise up children for me through her? And that resulted in Ishmael, and there's a question, is this the one through whom God will bring the promises? They're taking the promises of God in their own hands, or that's what they're trying to do. It was perfectly legitimate in the culture to do what they did, but not according to God's will and plan. Ishmael is not the chosen promised one. We'll see that more in detail next time we come to this passage in two weeks from now, three weeks from now actually. Abraham and Sarah often faltered in their waiting. We saw this last week as well as they made their way to a part of the promised land that did not know the reputation of Abraham. And again, they returned to, or at least Abraham returns to his scheming, faithless ways. And he says to Sarah, say, you're my wife. And she does, and Bimelech, the king of Darar, takes Sarah as his own bride, and eventually God intervenes again to protect his promise and works to actively protect Abraham and Sarah. All this is to say God keeps his promises, but more than that, he works to protect His people, He works to protect His people even from their folly and their sin. He's actively worked to protect Abraham and Sarah all along the way. And then finally, after nearly three decades of waiting, God brings about the conception that will result in the promised son through whom blessings will flow to all the nations and all the families of earth. God is faithful in blessing His people by keeping His promises. That is the character trait of God seen Above all, in the book of Genesis thus far, we've seen a lot of God's character, by the way. It's not just that he keeps his promises for, say, blessing. He also keeps his promises for judgment. That's what we have in Genesis 18 and 19, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and the situation there, and even with Lot and his daughters. But God keeps what he promises. He does what he says. He is sovereign and he uses, he acts out of his sovereign good will to both make and protect and keep his promises with power and certainty. And he's merciful that he even keeps his promises to a wayward, sinful, stubborn, foolish, stiff-necked people like Abraham and Sarah, like Israel in the wilderness, and like you and me. He continues to bless, even when everything we have done would seem to argue for our rejection, that the Lord would be done with us, that he would have that first instance of Abraham and Sarah faltering on his promises and fleeing to Egypt, that he would have at that moment said, okay, I'm gonna start over with some other guy from Ur. Try again. But God doesn't do that. He keeps his promises. in his sovereign power and in his gracious mercy to a people who often fell to wait properly. This is the character of God that's revealed over and over and over again throughout the history of redemption. It's here in Abraham and Sarah, it will be seen in Isaac, it'll be seen in Jacob especially, it'll be seen in Israel in the wilderness, it'll be seen in Israel in the land, in Israel in exile, and just turn to the New Testament and find out that things are not much better. where every New Testament letter, even the best ones like Philippians or First Thessalonians, still have instruction, conviction that God is speaking through the apostles to wayward people who are forgetting the resurrection. who are forgetting the very gospel itself, like the churches in Galatia, who are forgetting to love one another and seek the unity of the Spirit, like in Ephesus, who are forgetting the very demands of the ethics of God's kingdom, like Corinth. Even the good churches, like First Thessalonians, or Thessalonian church, forgetting the second coming of Christ and what all that involves, and that the dead will be raised. You know, this is serious what God does with his people. I mean, I think I've said this before, one of the shocking things about pastoral ministry to me, and I'm on my eighth year of ordained ministry, but I've been in ministry and youth minister capacities now since like 2005, and one of the things that continues to shock me is that the second part of Paul's letters where he deals with these sins, Not just like the respectable sins, like pride or greed or things like that, that can be hidden in our hearts, that can sometimes work out in ways that are often praised by this world. You know, someone who is very zealous, work, what could be motivated by pride? But I mean, there's like dirty sins, adultery, lust, murder, hatred. like in your heart, like lying, stealing, you know, these basic commandments that we all say, oh, I would never do that. If you read the second half of Paul's letters, you find churches and Christians doing that all the time. And as I said, one of the shocking things to me in ministry is how much I see these very sins in the church, even the best churches of our denomination, even in my own heart, how these things continue in us. Yet God keeps his promises for good to you, to your family, to me, to my family, to us as a congregation. That's no reason to excuse sin, God forbid. As Romans 6 tells us, we do not sin that grace may abound, but we rejoice in his grace that does abound to sinners. We see God keeps his promises. The second point we see here is this supernatural wonder of it all. that at every point in this passage, and what we've seen thus far in Abraham's life, that God's supernatural work is emphasized. This is not ordinary providence that is playing out. This is actually going against ordinary providence, and it's repetitive. This passage just highlights, and notice the number of things here that describes it. First is verse two. Sarah conceives and bore Abraham a son in his old age. We're reminded in verse five that Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him, and in proper fashion, the age of Sarah is a bit hidden here, but we know that she's 90 years old. This is not the ordinary timescale for pregnancy and birth. And yet God works against such, above such, supernaturally opening the womb of his servant Sarah here. who is well past the childbearing age. This is what we saw last week, in that one of the ways God worked in the situation to protect his promise when Abimelech took Sarah as his wife, one of the ways God worked there was to close the wombs of the people of Gerar, particularly of those of Abimelech's household, so that they did not conceive, did not give birth to children. There was a way that somehow, we're not told in the passage, but they knew that they were, at that point at least, infertile and unable to give birth. But then whenever everything's ironed out, when Abimelech returns Sarah, when Abraham rightfully prays for Abimelech, when Abraham himself is humbled, then we read that God opens the wombs. That's to say that God has power over childbirth. That's true in Genesis. 20 and 21 is true today. It's true throughout the whole scripture. It's true here. Sarah was barren for nearly a century. She's 90 years old, and God opens her womb. More than that, Abraham is, as Paul says in Romans 4.19, as good as dead. How's that for describing someone's old age? And yet God used him. to bring about the conception of this child in Sarah's womb. Now this is in great contrast to the natural attempts, as opposed to supernatural, the natural attempts of Abraham and Sarah all along the way to bring about this promise, right? Most especially the scenario of the scene with Hagar and the son she would give birth to, Ishmael, who will play, again, more in the narrative here, in the verses 8 and following, which is, again, a natural way to bring about a child of promise. It was reliant upon their own wisdom apart from a resting patience and trust in the Lord, because nothing is too hard for the Lord, we're reminded in Genesis 18. And this narrative of Abraham and Sarah proves that point again and again and again. This supernatural birth is not something that's totally unique here. It's not something that just belongs to God's work with Abraham and Sarah. If you know your scripture well, you know that it is a constant refrain throughout the scriptures. Not even in just those who are barren, who God then grants children, think of Hannah, but Even especially, I would say, around the time, the proper time, the right time that God chose to send forth his son into the world, what happens? But there's another older woman who was barren. Elizabeth, the wife of a priest named Zechariah, who became the mother of John the Baptist, whom God opened her womb and gave a son who would be the greatest of all the prophets of the old covenant, who would be the forerunner of the Messiah, the one who announces the coming of the Lord, the one who himself points to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus, who himself is born supernaturally in the womb of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, who comes ultimately to bring peace and blessing to the nations, who comes as the son of Abraham, supremely, who is the offspring, God promised Abraham, who would bless the families of earth, even you and me. You see, God's power supernaturally over birth is tied so beautifully to his work of redemption. Because this supernatural birth, when you think of it in light of the rest of the scripture, is not just the birth of flesh and blood, but the birth of the spirit, the supernatural birth that he works in. Every one of his children that comes from above, the new birth, where he takes out a heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh, the supernatural way that God is able to give life apart from this world in a natural way, in that same way he gives life to his people by bringing to them a new heart, by giving them the new birth. Here, we're reminded that God supernaturally works to fulfill his promises, specifically his promise here that he will provide from the seat of the woman, one who will crush the head of the serpent. God works supernaturally to fulfill his promises, but he doesn't always work immediately to fulfill his promises. That leads us to our third point here, that this all happened at the right time. We read here in these verses that Isaac arrived at the time in which God had spoken to him. It's verse two. This is the year previous when God appeared to Abraham. The Lord appeared walking in the form of a man with two of his angelic hosts, visiting Abraham and proclaiming that he will bless him a year from now with a son. This is all at the right time. Remember, this is nearly 25 or more years after Abraham was first called from Ur and given the promises of a child. This was after a long expectation, a long season of waiting, filled with missteps along the way. I think there's one simple observation that should help us here as we consider our own lives, and that is that the the scriptures like space, the space of the scripture that is concerned with Abraham's narrative, like the amount of chapters, like chapters 12 through 21 now, the amount of chapters, just the weight of words, the account of Abraham's life is almost exclusively in the season of waiting. Abraham lived how many years, 175 years or something like that? That's a long time. And yet the scripture focuses on that 25 years from the speaking of the promise to its fulfillment. That's where we have the vast majority of Abraham's life and narrative and story and faith lived out. In other words, the message God is preaching to us or the scripture is revealed to us in the story of Abraham is that he is a God of promise. He brings about faith on behalf of his people who must walk by faith and not by sight. And yet he will fulfill his promises at the right time. God acts when he chooses to, not only for Abraham, but as we read in Galatians 4, even in the sending forth of his son. Remember the first promise of the gospel, it's way back in the garden, I already referenced it, it's Genesis 3, 15, where God's speaking to the serpent, promises that it's the seed of the woman who will come, and though he will be himself bruised at his heel, he will crush the head of the serpent. And then you have years and years and decades and centuries and millennia even until that promise comes to fruition. Until in the fullness of times, that is a way of saying the right moment when everything is perfectly right, God sends forth his son born of a woman. He sends forth his son and he acts to bring redemption. Now think of all the expectation that happened between Genesis 3.15 and well, Matthew chapter one. We see this all throughout the book of Genesis. Actually, the book of Genesis could be said to be a book of waiting, of anticipation of that covenant promise to be fulfilled. I mean, it's Eve's like gut reaction when she first gives birth to Cain. Finally, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. The implication of that is perhaps this is the one who will put things right. We quickly find out Cain is absolutely not the one, so then you fast forward in the narrative and you get to Noah, the man whose name literally means rest, because the anticipation is perhaps this one will finally bring rest from the toil that is given to the children of Adam under the sun, and yet Noah does bring redemption, right? Judgment, or at least God in the context of Noah's life and ministry as a preacher brings judgment to the world, but then quickly we realize after Noah departs the ark and plants a vineyard and gets drunk and passes out in his tent. We quickly learn that he is not the one who brings true rest. Okay, what about Ishmael? After God promised Abraham, like here is, through your son, I'll bring light to the world. I'll bring blessing to all people. And Ishmael was born and it's like, was he the one? Well, actually up until this point in the narrative, we're left wondering, or Abraham and Sarah are left wondering perhaps he is. But then when Isaac is born, It becomes clear that this is the one through whom his offspring will be named. In other words, God's people have been a people of waiting, people who have expectation throughout their whole existence from the beginning until the baby is born in the manger in the city of David. is God's message for us, that he works at the right time. And it's so important for us to understand this because we, like Abraham and Sarah, are often very poor waiters. We're very poor at having patience. We can look at Abraham and Sarah as we have in the past weeks, and we can say, man, they really blew that. Once we understand the weight of their decisions, the leaning on their human understanding, we can rightfully say, well, they went very wrong. along the way. But how much better are we? I mean, God didn't answer, you could say, his promises for Abraham and Sarah for, you know, decades. And yes, they faltered along the way then. God doesn't answer our prayers the way we think he should in a matter of hours or days, and we ourselves get a bit antsy. If the heater hadn't worked, how many of us would still be freezing right now and wondering why didn't I bring a jacket? Now that's perhaps a light way of saying it, but it's true. When we make a prayer of God, when we expect for him to bless us and he doesn't do it immediately, we very quickly become impatient. If not with ourselves, then definitely with other people. And we should be patient about God's work in ourselves. Yeah, that's definitely a true thing. We can look at ourselves and say, man, I wish I was better than I am. I can't believe I did that again. Man, I'm just a terrible Christian. But how much more do we do that with other people? We're not patient with God's work in the lives of other people, perhaps in our children's lives, or our parents' lives, or our spouse's life, or our neighbor's life. We grow very impatient with the lack of holiness that they are progressing in. We're very impatient. That's, I think, instructive then to note that even in the New Testament, the language of patience and long-suffering is especially brought out in dealing with one another in the church, right? Forgiving one another as we've been forgiving in Christ, like being patient with one another concerning our individual levels of and working out of sanctification. All this is to say that God calls us to be a people who wait. He calls us to be a people who walk by faith and not by sight, just like Abraham and Sarah, knowing that one day He will give us sight. He will fulfill His promises in fullness, and we know He will do that because He's already done it in a way. He's already given us His Son, who came and lived and died and rose again and ascended to the right hand of God in heaven. And our waiting as New Testament believers is different in that fashion because we already have all of the promises of God fulfilled, but yet our waiting involves the consummation of them, the fullness of them to come. We already experience life in God's kingdom, but we wait for the coming again of our King. He will judge the living and the dead. He will make everything right. He will wipe away every tear from every eyes and death will be no more. And there will no longer be mourning or crying or pain or any of that for the former things have passed away. Like we still wait for that day. And until we do, he calls us to walk by faith and not by sight. These verses here remind us of the waiting God calls us to. not to become anxious and not to become as people who think that God doesn't work justly, that he's departed his throne. We ought not be idolaters like. The people in Elijah's day, remember the taunting of Elijah with the prophets of Bell. Perhaps he's on vacation, Elijah says. Perhaps he's relieving himself. Perhaps he's taking a nap, and that was entirely possible in the theology of Bell worship. But we are not like that, for our God never sleeps, never slumbers. He is always the one who keeps us. He might not work as quickly as we would desire him to, but he does. the right time for His glory and for our good. And until He works to bring a full flowering of all of His promises into our lives, we must wait. He does this all that in receiving, we might quickly delight ourselves, might find joy, might find in the possession of what God has promised delight. This is the end of the matter, and it's our last point here. First of all, we see in Sarah and Abraham here, God gives them the desire of their heart. He gives them exactly what he promised them, a child. And what do we see happen? We see a great transformation in both of them. We see it in Abraham. that he immediately goes to work. He immediately, in joy, takes Isaac and names him, well, Isaac, as God had commanded him to be named, and circumcises him on the eighth day, as we read in verse four here, God had commanded him. There's no questioning, there's no balking, there's no sidestepping, there's immediate Obedience, which is not divorced from joy. It's actually the joy that drives Abraham to such obedience here. God worked for Abraham. Blessing and the joyful response of his servant is to follow his instruction. That's the whole dynamic of the Christian life. God works to bless us and the response of our heart is to follow his instruction. But the actual, the greater transformation here is seen in Sarah. For she, remember back in the tent, In Genesis 18, when she was eavesdropping on this conversation between Abraham and the Lord, she heard that she will give birth to a son, and what did she do? She chuckled. She laughed, and her laugh was a laugh of cynicism, of, it was incredulous as a laugh. It was like, like a, ha ha, sure. Like, yeah, right, that kind of laugh. Well, here notice what Sarah does. Notice how her laugh is changed from one of, incredulous cynicism to joy unspeakable and filled with glory. She says here in verse six, God has made laughter for me, and everyone who hears will laugh over me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children, yet I have born him a son in his old age? This is her breaking out in a brief poem, expressing her delight and joy at holding this baby boy in her arms. And this laughter here is not the laughter of incredulous mockery of what God has said, like, that can't be true. No, this is the laughter of joy. This is Sarah realizing that it is God who has done this, and this is a great transformation in her heart. Actually, all along the way this far, Sarah has not been a model wife, a model believer. She has often been the one who, well, like we read in Genesis 18, is testing God. Abraham is not free of guilt either, by the way. Abraham has his own issues. But Sarah has been one who is not displayed as a faithful, trusting, well-waiting woman. And yet here this changes as God works in her heart and changes her Sinful cynicism to a great joy. This laughter is not one that is like the previous laughter. This is one that not only expresses her joy at the birth of a child in her old age, but also invites others to it, for that's what she means when she says, everyone who hears will laugh over me. That is not laughing at her. not laughing at her, but laughing with her, over what God has done with her, is what God has accomplished in her life. A recognition of the wonder of the birth of this promised son. This joy after waiting and mourning, after sin, and the redemption and protection that God provides, this is where this passage points us. for this very same laughter is the laughter that you and I are called to have, as we belong to the kingdom of God. It's a joyful receiving of what God has promised and is working out for us now. The kingdom of God is not in eating and drinking, but it's in the joy of the spirit, Paul tells us in Romans 14. It's in receiving what we have now, even if it's just a part, a portion of what one day we will receive in full, and receiving it with joy. Like we still wait to enter into the joy of our master, But even now we're called to delight ourselves in the Lord. We're given his word, which is like a feast set before us, abundant in delight. We have all, for many, many, many, many reasons to give God thankful, joyful praise and to invite others to do the same. We have more than Sarah could even imagine. She holds Isaac in her arms. We, this side of the cross, we made this point many times in our trek through Genesis. We are in a much better position, for we don't just consider that there was a baby that Mary held in her arms in fulfillment of God's promises, but that one who came, lived, grew up. gave Himself on the cross for our sins, died and then rose again in glorious victory and ascended to the Father's right hand is even right now ruling and reigning over us for good and interceding and praying for us. Like right now we have the fruition, the fruitfulness of all of God's promises that are yes and amen in Christ. And therefore we have an infinite world of more reasons to give joyful thanks to God and to invite others into such joy than Sarah could ever imagine. God has already given us life and justification in his son. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? Certainly provide exactly what we need for life and godliness. This is what helps us wait, waiting the coming again of our savior, or waiting the moment when we will close our eyes in death and see him, and wait the resurrection to come. This will help us to rest joyfully in what Christ has accomplished, even as we wait for the fullness that is yet to be, but is perfectly assured. God will finish what he began in us. That's the promise of all of the Bible. It's seen here in Abraham and Sarah. It's something we should not grow weary of. For that good work he has begun in us, he will bring to completion on the day of Christ Jesus. So let us be a people who do not spurn God's goodness in our waiting. Let us not grow discontent in our lack of having, at least by what we think we should have. Let us look not just to God's fulfillment of his promise to Sarah in the birth of Isaac, but his fulfillment of his promise to his people in the birth of the Messiah, who came to us, who lived for us and died for us, who rose again for us, who reigns and rules over us, and who will return. to bring us to our heart's greatest desire. Let us wait on Him. Let's pray.