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YOU WILL CALL HIM LAUGHTER!
After spending six months on Leviticus I determined
to do something on the lighter side. Initially, I thought about doing
a David Letterman-like series on the top ten funniest stories in Scripture. Then
God directed my thinking toward the idea of looking at the broader topic of "laughter" which
would almost certainly include looking at some of funniest stories in Scripture.
I saw no problem with this approach for a series
on "laughter" would still be a lightweight topic. I was
wrong! There is far more to laughter than laughing. Abraham and Sarah
may have never seen beyond the laughter of having a child of their own. But
you and I have been given a greater perspective and we can see what Abraham and
Sarah were too close to Laughter to see. We can see that their laughter
was a prelude to everlasting laughter.
To see what we ought to be seeing in the story
of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac we need to apprehend the fact that in their day
names were more than a form of identification. Your name, as in the case
of Abraham and Sarah, indicated the newness of God's will for your life or the
nature of your character. Now it's rare for God to actually designate the
name of a child but on occasion he spelled it out for the parents as in the case
of Abraham and Sarah. For in Genesis 17:19 we read:1
But God replied, "Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You will name
him Isaac, and I will confirm my everlasting covenant with him and his descendants.
If names were important in Abraham's day, and
they were, then this is a significant juncture in history. Sure, in the
immediate context it's a fitting name for Abraham laughed at the idea of having
a child in his old age and Sarah would laugh when she heard God say it in his
conversation with her husband. So the two of them on their own may have
eventually settled on "Isaac" as the name of their child. But
they didn't have to sort through a hundred-and-one names. God selected
the name for them, not because it was appropriate, but because it was important
to his overall plans for you and I.
You may have heard about the two wannabe missionaries,
David and Bill, who were doing some short-term work in Pushkin. After a
day of working with English Language Students, they returned to their hotel. The
phone rang and a strange Russian voice spoke to David. When the caller
switched to rough English, he asked, "You vant a voman?" David,
confused and a bit naive, thought the caller was referring to their female guide
or some other official and asked, "What is her name?" After
a pause, the procurer responded, "Vat name you vant?"
The Russian figured that for whatever reasons
names were important to this guy so he went along with the flow of the conversation. Well,
for whatever reasons, the name of this child was important to God. So
instead of leaving it to chance he selected the name for this child of promise.
To call him Isaac, however, was a little premature;
at least from Sarah's viewpoint. Yes, he was conceived in pleasure for
both parents, and they looked forward to having a son of their own, but the pregnancy
itself undoubtedly meant morning sickness, swollen feet, and mood swings. Then
came the pangs of labor, the husband not knowing what to do, and the tortuous
agony of delivery. Only after sweat, tears, and blood would Laughter
come into the world.
But as promised, Sarah gave birth to a son. In
Genesis 21:1 - 7 we read:
Then the LORD did exactly what he had promised. 2
Sarah became pregnant, and she gave a son to Abraham in his old age. It all happened
at the time God had said it would. 3 And Abraham named his son Isaac. 4
Eight days after Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded. 5
Abraham was one hundred years old at the time.
And Sarah declared, "God has brought me laughter!
All who hear about this will laugh with me. 7 For who would have dreamed
that I would ever have a baby? Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age!"
Sarah's declaration tells us two things. First,
it tells that she probably related the story to any and every stranger that came
within shouting distance of her tent. It was something to crow about and
you can easily imagine those who passed by, and stopped long enough to talk,
laughing right along with Sarah. You see, laughter is contagious. It
always has been and always will be an infectious condition.
It is my understanding that Young Life Camps used
to conduct an experiment on unsuspecting teenagers. They had each camper,
happy or not, lie down on the ground with his or her head on the belly of another. As
the stair-step line connected together, at least one person, would invariably
start laughing and the epidemic would begin. Soon everyone was laughing,
regardless of what mood they were in when they came into the room.
This infectious aspect of laughter holds a very
practical lesson for you and me. It tells us that we need to give our
laughter away to those in need as much as we give our time or our material goods. I
believe it was Thomas Sydenham, a 17th century English physician who said, "The
arrival of a good clown exercises more beneficial influences upon the health
of a town than twenty jackasses loaded down with drugs."
You see, a smile, a joke, or some unsuspected
laughter may be just what someone else needs on any given day. Rather than
drugs, the laughter of others may enable someone to endure and overcome the very
thing that has them down and threatens to undo them. After all, it is
an infectious condition!
Someone by the name of Dorothy Day put it this
way:
How necessary it is to cultivate a spirit of joy.
To act lovingly is to begin to feel loving,
and certainly to act joyfully brings joy to others,
which in turn makes one feel joyful.
I believe we are called to the duty of delight.
Second, Sarah's laughter came only after her ninety-year
body endured more than she had expected, even though she had undoubtedly brought
her share of babies into the world as a midwife. It came only after agonizing
contractions. It came only after his sweet little head was pushed
out of her blessed womb. It came only after Sarah thought
she was going to die.
In like manner, the gospel is bad news before
it is good news. You and I deserve the punishment of death and whether
we admit it to ourselves or not we know we are guilty of numerous transgressions
before a holy God. We know we can't stand before God on our own merits. We
know that we fall short of God's glory.
But God in his mercy and grace sent his Son to
die on our behalf. His gruesome and awful death pulled the rug out from
under the reign of death and sin. It dealt a death blow to Satan's hold
on our lives. In essence, Christ Jesus took the wind out of sin and death
so that you and I could really laugh.
Of course, you might argue that we still live
in a world torn apart by one tragic event after another. We are surrounded
by death, by our own inadequacies, by fear, and by loneliness. And we
live in a world where many are torn apart by poverty, sorrow, injustice, and
man's inhumanity to man. It's a dark world and lately it appears to
be getting darker.
True enough, but in Christ it is possible to live
for the next life and be merry in this life. Death await us, but after
the funeral we look forward to a better life. You may have heard about
the elderly man who was lying on his death bed. As he languished toward
death he caught a whiff of chocolate chip cookies being baked in the oven by
his wife of 62 years. As the aroma of those cookies floated through the
fogginess of his mind he longed for one last cookie before he died.
Finally, after considerable effort, he rolled
out of bed and crawled to the kitchen where his wife was busy baking the cookies. Weakly,
he reached up to the table to grab this wonderful treat. His hand fumbled
around and finally managed to latch onto a warm cookie. Suddenly, his
wife whacked his hand with a wooden spoon and the cookie fell to the floor
just beyond his reach.
"Why?" he mumbled. "Why
did you do that?"
She answered, "They're for the funeral!"
Yes, death awaits us. But after the funeral
you and I are going to sit down with the King of kings and enjoy a chocolate
chip cookie. Why? Because you and I are not children of Hagar, we are
the children of Isaac.
In the New Testament, one of the books you won't
find any humor in is the book of Galatians. The Christians in the Roman
province of Galatia had gotten off to a good start while Paul remained with them. But
in his absence others had slipped in and called his views and authority into
question. They reintroduced the old ways, herding these joy-filled-free-at-last
saints into the corral of religious rules and regulations. These young
Christians caved into intimidation and logic. In the process, they lost
all semblance of laughter.
To usher them back into a life of freedom and
joy Paul, in Galatians 4:21 - 5:1 gave them the following illustration. He
wrote:
Listen to me, you who want to live under the law.
Do you know what the law really says? 22 The Scriptures say that Abraham
had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife. 23
The son of the slave-wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment
of God's promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God's own fulfillment
of his promise.
Now these two women serve as an illustration of
God's two covenants. Hagar, the slave-wife, represents Mount Sinai where people
first became enslaved to the law. 25 And now Jerusalem is just like Mount
Sinai in Arabia, because she and her children live in slavery. 26 But
Sarah, the free woman, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. And she is our mother. 27
That is what Isaiah meant when he prophesied,
"Rejoice,
O childless woman!
Break forth into loud and joyful song,
even though you never gave birth to a child.
For the woman who could bear no children
now has more than all the other women!"
And you, dear brothers and sisters, are children
of the promise, just like Isaac. 29 And we who are born of the Holy
Spirit are persecuted by those who want us to keep the law, just as Isaac,
the child of promise, was persecuted by Ishmael, the son of the slave-wife.
But what do the Scriptures say about that? "Get
rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the
family inheritance with the free woman's son." 31 So, dear brothers
and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, obligated to the law.
We are children of the free woman, acceptable to God because of our faith.
So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure
that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law.
Paul portrayed two camps. The one is the
camp of Ishmael, the other is the camp of Isaac. The one has as its mother,
Hagar the Horrible. The other has as its mother, Sarah - a princess. The
one is regulated by rules and regulations, by religious police who make sure
everyone stays in line. The other is regulated by the Holy Spirit. The
one is characterized by slavery. The other by freedom and laughter for
our God is the God of Abraham, Laughter, and Jacob. The one camp has no
share in the inheritance. The other has a share and is presently enjoying
some of its benefits.
After contrasting the two camps, after assuring
the Galatian believers that they were in Isaac's camp, he called on them to take
decisive action. He urged them to step away from the Judaizers and return
to the camp of light and laughter.
When Sarah told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and
Ishmael it greatly distressed him for it concerned his own flesh. But
he prayed about it and God told him to do as Sarah requested for Abraham's
offspring, the children of faith, would be reckoned through Isaac.
So early the next morning Abraham did as he was
directed. He performed the difficult task of separating himself from the
ordinary. He sent Hagar and Ishmael away. We too must do as Abraham
did, we must choose grace over law, we must separate ourselves from the ordinary
and live as free men and women. Men and women who are free to laugh and
who look forward to the mirth of eternity which will surely be found in presence
of Isaac and those of his tribe.
1 In the Old Testament God named Ishmael, Isaac, Solomon,
Josiah, Cyrus, and Isaiah's son. In the New Testament he named John the
Baptist and Jesus.
THE JOY OF LAUGHTER 9/10/06
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