Genesis 18:1-16 – Being Human

Our reading today is from Genesis chapter 18, verses one to twenty-one.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

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.

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, and said, O Lord, if I have found favour in your sight, do not pass by your servant.

Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourself under the tree, while I may 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.

And Abraham went quickly into the tent of Sarah and said, Quick, three seas of fine flour, need it and make cakes.

And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly.

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 said to him, Where is Sarah your wife?

And he said, She is in the tent.

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.

Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.

The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.

So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I'm worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?

The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?

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.

But Sarah denied it, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid.

He said, No, but you did laugh.

Then the men set out from there, and they looked down towards Sodom, and Abraham went with them to set them on their way.

The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?

Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him, for I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.

Then the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to you.

If you join us while we were singing, my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church, and uh it is great to see you all this morning, especially with a slightly more awkward uh Sunday with the with the marathon being on.

Uh it's one of the issues of being a city center church.

Uh I uh I dreamed a dream in times gone by when hope was high and life worth living.

I dreamed that love would never die.

I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid, and dreams were made and used and wasted.

There's no ransom to be paid, no song unsung, no wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night with their voices soft as thunder, as they tear your hopes apart, as they turn your dreams to shame.

I always wanted to be a thespian, uh, and so that was just my little monologue moment there.

Anybody recognize that song?

That's I Dreamed a Dream, isn't it?

From Lim Israb, uh sung by Fontine uh at the at the very end, really, of her journey just about.

It's a song about the loss of innocence and of wonder, a loss of hope.

It feels like one of the inevitable things about growing up is to become, I don't know, a little bit more jaded about life.

Like we say, I'm not I'm not cynical, I'm just a realist.

When we're kids, our imaginations run wild.

Every cloud is a dragon, every shadow is a monster, our imaginations are full of colour and life and wonder and everything.

Even the the season that we're getting in as we prepare for for Christmas time is full of childlike wonder.

And we kind of, as adults, we kind of think, well, I've got to live vicariously through the little ones who kind of see uh all just the goodness and the glitz, and you know, I've got to work a job and I've got to save up all of the money to make sure that we prepare the meal and host, and it's just stress, stress, stress.

When you're a kid, you actually get all of the wonder and imagination.

And then when you grow up, you're told that, well, those things are they're silly and they're childish and it's time to move on.

Or maybe actually what ends up happening is that the things that you've experienced in your life uh they rob you of a sense of wide-eyed astonishment at the world, and things have happened in your past that have led you to become particularly cynical or jaded or skeptical about relationships, and and you feel kind of stuck in that.

But even if that's not you, we all kind of grow up and we get stuck in this world of adulting.

That's kind of what happens in the uh in the movie Hook.

That's portraying how old I am.

Um in the movie Hook Robin Williams, Robin Williams has uh forgotten that he's Peter Pan because he's got so obsessed with his career and with money and with with power and with with advancement and success.

And the whole movie is about him remembering that that childlike wonder.

And it's only when he remembers the uh his imagination again that he's able to fly because he's Peter Pan.

When did you lose your wonder at the world?

When did you become a realist?

When did your childlike amazement sap away?

Was it something that happened, or was it just a slow creep of realizing the stories that you were told, that there was more to them.

We bring that cynicism to church, don't we?

We could be jaded when we learn about God, especially when we hear stories uh that have become so familiar, because familiarity has this tendency of breeding contempt.

We kind of think, yeah, yeah, I know that.

Or you think of the world that you spend the vast, vast majority of your time in.

Imagine the people that you work with, the people that you're in class with, you tell them that you believe certain things about the world, that you believe certain things about God, or you believe in miracles.

It makes about as much sense to them as is going up to them tomorrow morning and saying, well, it's bank holiday tomorrow, but Tuesday morning, and saying, Hey, do you know what?

I've just come to a profound belief in the Easter bunny.

People look at you like you're crazy.

And that's what people think about why you're here this morning.

And maybe actually you've been brought along here this morning, and you think that the person who brought you is crazy.

The answer is they probably are a little bit.

They probably are.

But is this really all we have left?

Just kind of cynical realism.

Wonder feels like it's quite important, doesn't it?

It's quite nice to have an imagination.

One of the things that maybe we forget is that actually our imagination is a sense organ.

It's how we sense things like love and like hope.

You don't see love, you don't really hear love, you don't taste love.

You sense it, though, don't you?

So what do you sense it with?

Well, you sense it with your imagination.

You sense it with your sense of wonder.

And so your sense of wonder is important, actually, for uh being able to operate in the in the world.

Your sense of wonder is an important thing because it calls you uh out of yourself.

It helps you to glimpse something beyond the material.

To be a Christian is to be a supernaturalist.

That is, that we believe that there are things that are purely beyond this material world.

That there are things that are beyond this material world that are possible.

Chief example within Christianity would be the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, right?

We don't believe that that's a metaphor.

I was just talking this week uh to my barber about this.

Uh yes, I did get a haircut.

It's okay, you don't need to say anything.

Uh, but big shout out to Billy, who's probably going to listen to this sermon.

Um, but the resurrection, the resurrection, we don't believe it's a metaphor.

We believe that it's actually something that happened in history.

Christians are by nature supernaturalists.

And what's more, if you're sitting here thinking, okay, you're telling me about the Easter bunny right now, let me make a case for that, that that's not actually all that illogical.

That it's a very appropriate belief for a Christian, because you see, to be a Christian is to believe that there is a God who exists outside of this material system, that outside of the natural laws that govern our world is a natural lawgiver.

One who made and who therefore has the power and rights, the prerogative, to tinker with those natural laws.

And hey, that's all a miracle is.

It's a tinkering with the laws of nature.

And who else better to do it than the one who made them?

So within a Christian worldview, it's an extremely logical thing to conclude that Christians might be supernaturalists.

Life and sin and suffering, they steal our wonder, they jade our imagination, they taint our amazement at the world, but you and I were made for a sense of wonder.

We're made to have our senses captivated by awe, we're made to have our imaginations stimulated, we're made to forget ourselves and enjoy realities far higher and richer and more wonderful than we could ever create for ourselves.

At the heart of this passage, and we're really only going to go to verse uh 15, uh, all of the uh the Sodom and Gomorrah stuff is going to come into the into the following week, uh following weeks.

But the the heart of this passage, Genesis 18, 1 to 15, is this question that God Himself asks.

He says, Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

That if there is a God, then wonder is possible.

Oh is a right response because of who he is and what he does.

So we're going to look at this passage around three things, three things to marvel at, three things to wonder at.

First, wonder at the friendship of God.

Wonder at the friendship of God.

The passage opens with a slightly strange scene.

It's the hottest part of the day, the morning's work is done, and 99-year-old Abraham is settling down for siesta at the door of his tent.

He looks up and suddenly he sees three men.

That's what we read in verse 2.

Let me remind you, 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.

He runs, he bows down to them.

Clearly, Abraham recognizes that there is inherently something very important about them, supernatural even about these visitors, because when he addresses the central one, he says, My Lord, that is my Adonai.

There are a couple of different uh primary ways of talking about God in the Old Testament.

The first is Yahweh or Jehovah.

Um, that's the capitalized capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D.

But the Jews didn't like, don't like to take that name on their lips for fear of blasphemy, so they tend to use the word Adonai.

It means Lord or Master or Sir.

But he seems tends to, he seems to perceive something that is quite important, special, supernatural, even about this person.

And certainly as the story unfolds, we find out that he's right, that it is indeed the Lord himself.

So if you if you were casting your eye down, you'd see that actually uh the author does begin to capitalize the L-O-R-N-D.

And in the start of chapter 19, chapter 19, verse 1, one of the things that we read there is that the other two guys are actually angels.

Let me just uh nip ahead just to show you that.

Verse uh verse uh one of chapter 19, the two angels came to Sodom that evening, and they were sitting at the gate uh where Lot was sitting, and he was sitting at the gate of Sodom.

These are the two angels that were with the Lord that have journeyed on to Sodom and Gomorrah.

And Abram's response here is it's swift, it's unexpected, it's lavish.

He runs to them.

You may indeed actually come from a culture where grown men running is not the done thing, and that's the way it was uh in the ancient Near East.

It was a sign of you forgetting yourself, uh forgetting your position in a society where honor and pride were the only thing that matters.

He dismisses all of that, and this 99-year-old man runs to them and he bows down low as a sign of his humility, and he invites them, he begs them not to pass him by to uh so that they might come and dine with him, and that he might give them, as he says, a morsel, a morsel of bread.

A morsel?

He runs into the tent and he says to Sarah, we're gonna need three sailas of flour.

Need three sailas of flour and make cakes.

And because I'm sure that the last time you baked, uh you weren't measuring out in salas, so you have no idea how much that is.

Let me tell you, it's six gallons of flour.

He runs in and says, get six gallons of the best flour and knead it into bread.

Like just there, just working all afternoon making this bread.

And then for these three people, he goes then to the field and he kills a whole cow for them.

And this meal has courses.

It's not just meat and bread, but it's followed by milk and curds.

That's dessert.

It's uh moving from the savory through to the sweet, it's the ancient Near Eastern cheese board at the end of the meal.

It's lavish.

The only modern equivalent to this level of lavish culinary generosity, it is only found when a son comes home to his mother.

It's the only place.

Daughters don't get it, I don't think.

Sons get it, though.

When the boy comes home, would you like a little bit of dinner?

Sure.

I've just I've just put on something small.

That's the Irish mommy version.

It's just a little bit.

And you walk in, and the dining table is like the banqueting hall in Hogwarts.

This is why I am the way I am, because I'm an only child and I'm an only son.

You see, you're now getting an insight into you know, I've just made you a little bit of dinner, but that's what Abraham's doing.

I just want to give you a little morsel.

Six gallons of flour later, and a whole cow.

Maybe he was Irish.

But in the midst of all of the food and the strangeness, there's something really wonderful going on.

It's that God's come to have dinner with this guy.

God of a the God of immeasurable glory, the God of endless holy purity, the God who dwells in the in the shimmering halls of eternity has come down to have steak sandwiches with Abraham.

This is the only time in the Old Testament that this happens.

It's the only time that God sits in fellowship with another human being in the Old Testament.

He dines with him.

And you know, don't you, that to dine with someone, to have somebody in your house for food, it is a sign of friendship and honor.

You don't tend to have your enemies around.

It's a very intimate thing to break bread together.

It's a it's a sign of friendship and of closeness and of loyalty.

This is refresh our minds is where to where this meal comes off the back of.

Last week, if you weren't here, uh you missed it, but we were talking a lot about circumcision.

And it would be good to go back and talk about that for another 20 minutes or so, wouldn't it?

No, no.

Um it comes right off the back of the covenant of circumcision.

And that that covenant, what is a covenant?

Covenant is a binding promise, a pledge that that cannot be broken.

And there, in that covenant, God has pledged himself to Abraham and to his descendants to be God to him and to bless them.

And one of the things that you need to realize is that in the Bible, every covenant, every binding promise has a sign and a meal.

The sign of the covenant here was circumcision.

And now we are having the meal.

Why do covenants have signs and meals?

Well, because the meal brings the it brings the promise out of the realm of just a legal contract, a legal agreement between two uh distinct and separate parties, and it makes it personal to share your table with someone.

And that's what's going on here.

God is saying, you know, I I pledged myself the chapter before that I would be, that I'd be God to you, that I wouldn't forsake you, that I would be close to you.

And here in the next chapter, God comes down and eats with Abraham.

For us as Christians, we have a meal.

A meal instituted by the Lord Jesus.

It's the Last Supper, isn't it?

What we've come to call the Lord's Supper or communion.

You might have even come from a background that calls it the Eucharist.

Eucharist just is the is the it's the Latin word for thanksgiving.

And Jesus institutes this meal, and he says things like, This is the cup of the new covenant, like the new binding pledge and promise that I am making with all of humanity.

That's made in my blood, that I'm the one that's cut off in order that you might be brought near.

And the remarkable thing about this is the thing to wonder at this morning is that what this means is that friendship with God is no longer a unique event, a one-off thing for Abraham in the Old Testament.

But it is a present reality for all who trust in Jesus.

How astounding that the God of the universe would invite you to dinner and call you his friend.

It's possible, maybe even likely, that sometimes we come to this table and we don't really think about what we're doing.

And we're kind of just going through their motions because you're like, oh, there's only two songs today, so quick, get up, I've got to get down and get the bread and wine.

And we we lose part of the significance of actually what's happening here is that God is inviting us back into friendship with Him.

us into relationship with himself.

And unlike Abraham, we don't prepare the food.

We come forward and our our hands are empty.

And he feeds us and he nourishes us.

He calls us friend because he was after all the one who dined with sinners.

And he dines with us still.

Have you lost your wonder, Christian, at the friendship of God?

That he would come down and make himself humble so that he might share your table.

Or put it a different way that he might invite you to come and share in his table.

Maybe just before you come down this this time you might or as you take the bread in your hands as you lift those tiny little cups you might just think to yourself what an amazing thing that the God who dwells in this resplendent glorious halls of eternity meets me in this meal and calls me friend wonder at the friendship of God.

Secondly wonder at the power of God at the center of this passage again is the promise of a son.

By this time it's been twenty five years since God first made the promise.

And finally now that Abraham is a hundred years old just about God is saying this time next year.

That's what we read in in verse 10 the Lord said I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife shall have a son in verse 11 now Abraham and Sarah were old and advanced in years and the way of women had ceased with Sarah.

So Sarah laughed to herself what does it mean that the way of women had ceased with Sarah verse 11 that's Moses essentially saying Sarah is not just old Sarah's gone through the menopause.

We'd already read right back in in 1130 that she had struggled to conceive chapter 11 verse 30 said that that Sarah was barren, very old fashioned quite a hard word to hear of somebody who's struggling with with infertility but now Sarah's actually she's postmenopausal.

The way of women has ceased with her that's what that verse means that that any hope of having a son had finally and completely faded after decades of trying and hoping and praying and weeping and and nothing.

And now her body has moved on and all natural ability can to conceive has left her.

Why was God so slow?

Imagine for a second if if Sarah had gotten pregnant 25 years ago or I mean she's she was she was advanced in years then.

She was 65 then or maybe if it had been 15 years ago or 10 years ago people would have thought that it was amazing for sure.

People would have congratulated her and maybe even praised God that it had finally happened for her.

But they wouldn't have necessarily seen it as a miraculous intervention just as something that has finally occurred God was slow in another place.

There's a strange passage in John chapter 11 and we we looked at it last year when one of Jesus' friends a man called Lazarus was dying and word was sent to Jesus saying come and heal Lazarus like he's close to death if you make it down in time you'll be able to you'll be able to heal him and one of the things that that John tells us he says that when Jesus heard this he waited two more days now he was already two days' journey away from Lazarus so time was of the essence by the time he he gets to Lazarus Lazarus is four days dead like Lazarus's body had started to decompose he waited why did he wait before going to the tomb of Lazarus and raising him from the dead why did he wait 25 years before saying this time next year we'll have a son because sometimes God waits until all hope is lost so that you can be in no doubt that it is him who is working when the miracle comes he does this to show that he will do whatever he has promised no matter how incredible no how no matter how impossible it seems and so when Isaac is born there's no doubt left in anyone's mind that this child has only come about because of God's miraculous action because God has acted to keep his promises sometimes God is slow this I hope comforts and assures us in a couple of ways first it helps us to deal with the slowness of God.

John 11 · chapter mention

How many times have we felt like we're longing for something we're hoping for something and that hope is is fading and fading and fading we finally give up on it and it is in those moments when we have given up all hope that actually God acts in a way that we could never expect that we could never would have prayed for or dreamed of I think about this and uh you know for us as City Church you know one of the one of the constant wrestles and struggles with us as a church and as church leadership is where is our where's our forever home is it going to be the cinema the cinema we so would long to be in a building that would uh that would be a blessing to the city seven days a week and it just seems more and more and more impossible.

We were looking at a building just this week and the cost is just astronomical and it just seems so impossible.

I'm tempted to for all to allow all of my hope to fade but I think that one of the reasons why God is slow to give us the desires of our hearts is because he's less interested in giving us what we want than he is in in growing faith and dependence on him so that when he does act he just blows the doors off our of our life oh that couldn't have happened if it hadn't been for you but there's also an assurance and a comfort here's a reminder in these verses that God is committed to fulfilling his promises even when they seem utterly incredible the Bible teaches us that when we are before we're Christians and when we're far away from God that we're spiritually dead.

You know Ben opened our time by reading from Ephesians 2 but says by grace you've been saved.

Yes it's true you read on up how does Paul start that passage it says but you you were dead you were dead in your trespasses and sins we're spiritually dead people we're spiritually like Lazarus we've turned from God and when we turn from the God who is our life we can only therefore embrace death we don't want him we don't want him to be our friends we don't want to dine with him with that close relational familiarity and it seems utterly impossible that he might change our hearts maybe you can think of if you're a Christian here this morning maybe you think of somebody in your life somebody who you love and it just seems so impossible that God would change their hearts this passage shows us that time and time and time again God is committed to his promises even if they seem impossible so Jesus says whoever believes in me will live even though they die or the gift of God is eternal life.

We might be tempted to sit there and think impossible how could God love someone like me God couldn't bring me round couldn't change me but then the reply from this passage comes back well is anything too difficult for the Lord or maybe you're a Christian and you hear the words of Jesus all that the Father has given to me will come to me and all those who come to me I will never drive away and you think well how can this be how can how can Jesus keep me knowing all of my all of my struggles and all of my sins and I feel like I'm making no progress at all how could he hold me eternally secure when when I fail so much and the answer from this passage comes back is anything too difficult for the Lord?

What's easier to give a 90 year old postmenopausal woman a son or to say to you sins are forgiven answer is anything too difficult for the Lord folks don't just wonder at the friendship of God wonder and stand in awe at the thing which makes friendship of God possible and that is the power of God that he would change your heart that he would move you from death to life there is nothing too difficult for the Lord.

Thirdly and finally wonder at the kindness of God wonder at the kindness of God the Lord here says this time next year Sarah will have a son and Sarah is she's in the tent because she's got six gallons of flour to work with right so she's in the she's in the tent and uh because it's a tent and not a wall she overhears the Lord speaking and we read in verse 12 so Sarah laughed to herself she laughed internally saying After I am worn out and my Lord is old Lord there's Abraham right now my Lord is old shall I now have pleasure she laughs we read in the last chapter and we didn't deal with it because we were too busy talking about circumcision that when God comes to Abraham and tells Abraham that they're about to have a son that he laughs as well let me remind you of that.

So he laughs verse uh 17 of chapter 17 if you're following along in your Bible then Abram 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?

And Abram said to God Oh that Ishmael might live before you God said no but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac which means he laughed I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant and for his offspring after him as for Ishmael I have heard you behold I have blessed him and I will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly he shall be the father of twelve princes and I will make him into a great nation Abraham laughs.

Sarah laughs both of these laughs are different and both of these laughs show the kindness and the mercy and the love of God.

Abraham's laugh is a is a kind of laugh of joyous astonishment it's a I I I can't believe it this is too good to be true sort of laugh I wish she was here to verify the this story today but she's not but on our wedding day uh when Philippa appeared at the at the top of the church and I saw her for the first time looking beautiful in her in her dress I laughed and she was a bit offended because she thought that I was laughing at her and most grooms you know they start to cry and things like that but I didn't I burst out laughing and I had to I've spent the last nine years trying to explain why I laughed.

So let me try and explain to you this morning why it is that I laughed.

Was it because I thought that she looked funny was it because I doubted whether she would actually go through with the wedding no it was a laugh that came from amazement and astonishment that this woman would marry the likes of me it was a laugh of wonder that this actually seems too good to be true that this woman is walking down the aisle to to be my wife it's that sort of laugh that Abraham is is responding to God with but even though Abraham laughs he still he still thinks in material terms why because he loves Ishmael it is his son after all and Ishmael's he's 13 now he spent over a decade nurturing this boy playing with him and so he said oh Lord wouldn't you just wouldn't you just graft Ishmael into the promise wouldn't oh that he would live before you he tries to push Ishmael forward into God's plans how does God respond Abraham more faithlessness how dare you put this slave girl's woman and or son in front of me more faithlessness from you no he doesn't sorry I didn't mean to scare the children no he's gentle isn't he's kind he's patient towards Abraham he says I've heard you Abraham I will don't worry about Ishmael I've I I've got him I will bless him I'm gonna smooth out all of the the sins behind uh how he came about I'm gonna bless your son I've got him he's in my hand I haven't forgotten him but the promise is going to come it's gonna come through this seemingly impossible way Abraham laughs in wonder and astonishment and still is thinking in material terms and God's patient he's kind he's merciful to him now in this passage Sarah laughs some commentators are quite hard on Sarah they draw stark contrasts between Abraham and her they say Abram's laugh was a laugh of wonder and astonishment at the goodness of God and Sarah's laugh Sarah's laugh was a laugh of cynical rejection and unbelief I think that's I don't know man I think that's a bit hard I don't I don't I don't run with that like maybe but I do like I'm gonna make a case that I think there's something else going on they want to say Abraham's laugh was good Sarah's laugh was bad but I think there's I think there's something else I think we can make a case that there's something more complicated going on than that and in order to do that you have to think like Sarah for a moment it's been 25 years God has seemed so slow.

She believed at least at one point that God was preventing her from having a child that's what she says in Genesis 16.

And now this when all hope has faded and she's gone through the metopause maybe actually when she overheard those words it actually landed on her like some sort of cruel joke like why would you say such a thing this woman who has lost all hope it's not that she's in open hostility towards God she's just sad and she's numb and so she gives this eternal internal not eternal she gives this internal hopeless yeah right sort of laugh and who could blame her how does God respond he asks in her hearing because she's just the other side of the tent why did Sarah laugh?

Now there's every indication as I've been saying in this text that that this laugh was quiet, inaudible it was a it was an internal thing it was a kind of a harumph when God asks about it she realizes that the one outside the tent can read her thoughts and so he says why did Sarah laugh and you can imagine her stepping out of the of the tent into that noonday sun and she's she's scared and she's sheepish and and so she denies it wouldn't you go no I did I didn't and what does the Lord do faithless I reject you how dare you lie to me that's one of the big ten that I'm going to talk about in a few hundred years' time thou shalt not lie no he just says no but you did laugh and there's something actually really wonderful in that he doesn't gloss over it but neither does he judge her he just says no hold on come on we both know you did here's the point not all unbelief is the same there's an unbelief that is an open hostility to God a rejection of him and of his lordship over this world and his lordship over us we just hate the very thought of it and we reject it outright and that's unbelief and and God is opposed to that unbelief it's a very scary thing to approach God with that sort of heart and I encourage you not to do it.

The call of God is to turn from that in humility and repentance but then there's another kind of unbelief isn't there there's an unbelief that arises from hopelessness of years and years and years of never having the promises of God realized of being so wearied and robbed by life that any glimmer of hope and comfort is just rejected because it's too hard to it's too hard to raise your hopes again because you've been disappointed so many times and so you just dismiss it out of hand of the hopeless how does God respond to you if you're coming here this morning and you don't believe but actually you don't believe because so much has happened in your life that it's hard for you to grasp onto any hope anymore that it just all it all seems too good to be true.

It all seems kind of too fanciful and so you're you've kind of gotten hardened to what we what we're talking about here and what we're saying because of what you've experienced.

How does God respond to you in unbelief that arises from a kind of hope Hopelessness God doesn't judge you who feel that way.

He's gentle.

He corrects you.

He says, no, no.

You did laugh.

No, don't be hopeless.

There's another instance of this in Jesus' life and ministry.

There's a there's a dad whose whose son is uh is dying.

Uh his son is uh being possessed by an evil spirit, and that evil spirit is is causing his son to be thrown into the fire when it's lit, or to be drowned in the well.

And and this this this man is just he's just at the end of himself.

He's tried everything, and he comes to Jesus, and Jesus says a kind of a kind of slightly pokey thing to him.

He says, All things are possible uh for those who believe.

If you only believe, you'll be well.

Do you know how the man responds?

The man responds by saying, Lord, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

What a great prayer.

Lord, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

Lord, there's there's stuff that there's stuff that I'm holding on to, the stuff that I get, but there's a whole bunch of stuff that I'm struggling with.

And there's there's things that have happened that I'm struggling to make sense of.

And it's not that I'm it's not that I'm hostile to you, it's not that I'm just shutting you out.

I do believe, but there's stuff that I'm wrestling with.

How does Jesus respond?

Jesus marvels at the man, and he heals his son.

And it's similar here with Sarah.

Sarah is not an outright rejection of God, I don't think.

I just think that she's been so mugged by life that it's hard for her to hope anymore.

And God is merciful to her, and in a sense, he says, Well, let's see who has the last laugh.

In the end, in the letter to the Hebrews, the writer reflects on Sarah and includes her in the great list of the women of faith that are to be admired and emulated.

Yes, she was hopeless here.

Yes, maybe her faith wasn't as strong or as clear as her husband's, and she was struggling.

God didn't reject her out of hand.

In fact, he spoke with her directly.

And did they did those words, did that little correction, just that little ah no, you did laugh.

Did that little correction, did that start a journey for her of deeper faith, of less hopelessness, of moving from cynicism to greater wonder?

Wonder at the God who would come and dine with her family as a friend, wonder at the God who would in a year's time do the seemingly impossible, confirming all of his promises and that he in fact is trustworthy and good.

Wonder at the God who looked at her in all of her hopelessness and did not despise her or reject her, but rather guided her gently and yet firmly towards truth and greater faith.

This is the God we worship.

This is the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

This is the God who comes and meets us.

The Lord Jesus invites us to come and to eat and to dine as a friend.

He invites us to trust his amazing promises, even though they seem impossible for you.

He invites you, O hopeless you, O cynical you, O tired and weary you, to come to him and to find your faith deepened, your amazement cultivated as you behold him with fresh eyes.

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