Witness Pt. 23

You that may not know me this morning, my name is Jesse, and I am an old country preacher, and I am blessed to work here at Mud Creek Baptist Church.

Take your Bible, please, and turn with me today to the book of Acts, chapter 12, the 12th chapter of the book of Acts.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

One of the key components of a systematic course is studying what theologians call theology proper.

And theology proper is the study of God Himself, God's character, God's attributes, God's nature, the things that the Bible tells us about God.

And as part of the study of theology proper, you discuss things like God's omnipotence, God's infinite power, God's omniscience, God's unlimited knowledge, the ontological trinity.

If you want to get very fancy, you talk about things like the Aseety of God, all of those sorts of things.

One of the elements of the character of God that is typically not discussed by theologians, maybe sometimes there are some fringe arguments, is the idea of God's sense of humor.

Does God have a sense of humor?

I pose that question to you today.

Now, some of you are expecting me to make a joke right now that goes something like this if you don't believe God has a sense of humor, you should look in the mirror.

But that's just mean.

I would never, never be that nasty.

God forbid.

Does God have a sense of humor?

Well, uh many would say God is holy, which is true.

God is glorious, also true.

God is high and exalted, absolutely correct.

And so it would be inappropriate for us to take our human understanding of a sense of humor and apply it to divinity.

And I sympathize with that argument to a large degree.

And yet, Scripture says in the book of Psalms, chapter number two, and verse number four, that when the heathen rage, and when the kings of the earth plot themselves to overthrow God's design, that God in heaven holds them in derision and God laughs.

He laughs at man's feeble attempts to take themselves so seriously.

God has the last laugh.

And as we all know, the one who laughs last laughs loudest.

And this passage of Scripture in Acts chapter 12 is one of the most humorous stories in all of the Bible.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And yet I think it is designed explicitly to teach us that however we understand God's sense of humor, it is sure and certain that God is the one who lasts laughs, laughs last, and God is the one who laughs loudest.

And this is a core truth that some of you need to take with you this morning, because you are currently in your life drowning in a whirlpool of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety with very little peace and very little confidence, because it's never occurred to you that God is going to have the last laugh.

And then there are many of you this morning that have come into this place because you take yourself so stinking seriously.

And yet, if we have a God who takes himself seriously, then that must mean we need not take ourselves so seriously.

And we can unburden ourselves from some of our pride, our gravity, and our self-importance.

You'll see all those things in this passage of Scripture today, as I want to present to you the one who laughs loudest.

Let's read from Acts chapter 12 this morning.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

The Word of God says, Now, about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church.

Then he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.

And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also.

Now it was during the days of unleavened bread.

Your Bible may say Passover, your Bible may say Easter.

So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.

And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers.

And the guards before the door were keeping the prison.

Now, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison.

And he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly.

And his chains fell off his hands.

Then the angel said to him, Gird yourself and tie on your sandals.

And so he did.

And he said to him, Put on your garment and follow me.

So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

When they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord.

And they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.

And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.

So when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.

And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer.

When she recognized Peter's voice, because of her gladness, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.

But they said to her, You are beside yourself.

Yet she kept insisting that it was so.

So they said, Oh, it is his angel.

Now Peter continued knocking.

And when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.

And he said, Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren.

And he departed and went to another place.

Then as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter.

But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death.

And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.

Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus the king's personal aid, their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied by the king's country.

On a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them.

And the people kept shouting, the voice of a God, and not of a man.

Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God.

And he was eaten by worms and died.

But the word of God grew and multiplied.

And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God abideth forever.

Because the book of Acts records the explosive growth of the first Christian churches, it would be easy for us to think that everything in the book of Acts is just moving from one triumph, one victory to the next.

And there are a lot of triumphs, there are many miracles, there are many victories, and yet there is also tragedy present in the early church.

This early church deals with the tragedies of death, just as churches today still do.

The early church deals with the tragedy of natural disaster.

The last words of Acts chapter 11 record a prophecy about a coming famine.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

The church is going to have to deal with that shortage of food.

We will also see as we go forward in Acts more and more of the tragedies of division that can occur in churches.

When people with different perspectives and different opinions with different passions start to pull in many different directions and churches divide.

And yet, underneath everything that happens in Acts, tragedies and triumphs, there is the ongoing tragedy of violent hostility and persecution against the followers of Jesus.

As we've studied this book this year on Sunday mornings, we've read about the death of the first Christian martyr by the name of Stephen in Acts chapter 7 and 8.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

And now we read about another death.

The text opens by telling us that King Herod Agrippa, who was incredibly powerful, incredibly well connected to the ruling families of the Roman Empire, incredibly influential, and incredibly skilled as a politician, sticks his finger out to feel the breeze of popular opinion shifting against the church, and he says, I want to make political hay out of this.

And so he arrests James, the brother of John, one of the first men to leave behind his fishing boat in Galilee and follow Jesus.

James who had walked with Jesus for three and a half years.

James who had seen the miracles, heard the Sermon on the Mount, James who had seen the Lord's appearances after the resurrection.

James, one of the first of the twelve, has been executed and is now gone.

This is wildly popular with the Jewish people.

And so Herod doubles down on his violence and determines that now he is going to shift his attention towards Peter, the most outspoken and the most visible leader of the church.

And as the story opens, James is dead.

Peter is in prison, awaiting his execution, apparently the very next morning.

And yet, when the story ends, notice what the text says in verse number 24 that the word of God grew and multiplied.

God, in his divine sense of humor, has turned tragedy into comedy.

And God will have the last laugh.

And if you don't believe it, just ask King Herod Agrippa II, who does not survive this story.

And so what I want to do today is I want to use this story to explore the idea that God laughs last and laughs loudest.

And I want to give you three consequences of that truth that are important for all of us.

And the first one you see on the screen, if God laughs loudest, then you can sleep deeply.

If God laughs loudest, you can sleep deeply.

Now, some of you already believe that, and I know what's getting ready to happen in the next five minutes of my preaching.

You're going to practice what I preach.

And you are going to take a nap for the glory of God.

Yet in this story, we are told that Herod Agrippa, a violent, powerful king of the Jewish people, really a puppet of the Roman state with deep connections to the Roman state, begins to exercise violence against the leaders of the church.

And really, all Herod is doing here is what many, many leaders and many, many politicians in a thousand different contexts have done throughout the centuries, with the belief that if you cut the head off the snake, the snake will die.

Our own government spent billions of dollars and countless years chasing Osama bin Laden all around the desert with the belief that if we get the guy at the top, then we'll stop the terroristic movement.

Herod has the same thought towards the church.

Peter seems to be the leader, seems to be the foundation upon which everything is built.

If we can destroy Peter, then that will demoralize everyone else.

And so Peter is arrested.

Peter is thrown in prison.

Not only is he thrown in prison, but evidently he's so tightly guarded that he is literally chained to the soldiers that are watching him.

And the Bible says that he is set to be executed the next morning after these events take place.

But we know that while Peter was in prison, God's people prayed.

We'll get to that in just a moment.

And while God's people prayed, God answered.

And the Bible says to us, notice what happens, that while he's kept in prison, verse number seven, an angel of the Lord stood in the prison cell.

God is able to break into prison to break Peter out.

A light shines in the prison.

There is an angel that appears with all of this heavenly glory, with all of this dramatic divine visitation.

And all of a sudden, the cell of the prison is illuminated with the glory of this angelic visitor.

I don't know if it happens that way.

I don't know what they sound like, but I imagine.

And what is Peter doing when this happens?

It's right there in front of you in your Bible.

What is Peter doing?

Peter's asleep.

Peter is the living embodiment of that great verse from Psalm chapter 127 that says that the Lord gives his beloved sleep.

Psalms 127 · chapter mention

It's vain to stay up late, it's worthless to rise early.

God will let you sleep deeply.

But here's my problem.

Peter is supposed to be executed the next morning.

And here I am, and I lose sleep over whether or not Blue Cross and Blue Shield is going to pay the latest doctor's bill.

I lose sleep over the questions that my kids ask me as their curiosity increases with age.

I lose sleep over problems professionally and problems personally.

I lose sleep just like you do over this issue that my brain needs to solve.

And then even when I finally do drift off to sleep, my brain turns my stressful thoughts into nightmares that bother me while I'm asleep.

And here is Peter, the night before he's supposed to be executed, so unbothered that he's not even praying.

He's asleep.

Where does this peace come from?

Well, we could say, and it is generally true, that God provides peace that passes understanding.

That's true.

But how?

How does this work?

How is this happening in Peter's life?

Now the text does not tell us, but the Bible does.

We know, I believe we know concretely why Peter was able to sleep this night.

And it comes after our Lord's resurrection, when Jesus appears to Peter and the disciples in John chapter number 21.

Peter has sinned and denied the Lord, but the Lord is going to recommission him and bring him back to usefulness and restore him.

And they have a conversation that goes like this.

Most assuredly, this is Jesus talking.

When you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished.

Notice what Jesus says to him.

John interprets this by saying, This he spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God.

And when he had spoken this, he saith to him, as he says to all of us, follow me.

In other words, Peter had heard directly from the Lord's lips a couple of things about his life.

Most importantly, he was going to live a long time.

Jesus told him, when you are old, somebody is going to take you and lead you to your place of death.

So Peter goes to bed in Acts chapter number 12, knowing this one thing.

And therefore, if Jesus said, You're going to live till you're old, Peter knows it ain't time for me to go.

It's simple.

Peter built his confidence on the promise of Jesus.

Some of y'all missed it.

Missed it.

You're already sleeping deeply.

Peter built his confidence on the promises of Jesus.

Now, to be totally transparent with you, and I feel like my job as a pastor is to be a professional truth teller.

The Bible does not give you one word, much less one verse, of promise about the quantity of your life.

In fact, the Bible tells you that your life is a vapor, that it will go by very, very quickly no matter how many years God gives you.

The Bible does not tell any of us that we are going to live to be old.

But friends, this book is full of page after page of promises from our God about the quality of your life.

And the Lord has told us, even without telling us how long we are going to live, he has told us that he will live with us.

Now our Lord has not promised us that our path will not take us into an intensive care unit or a locked Alzheimer's ward.

But our Lord has promised us that if that's the direction we go, his goodness and his mercy will follow right there with us.

He has not promised us that we will have an easy trip, but he has promised us that the landing will be safe.

He has not promised us that everything we endure in life will be good, but he has promised us that he is good and that all things will work together for our good and for his glory.

He has not promised us that every day would be easy, that every burden would be relieved, that every question would be answered.

But bless his name, he has promised us that he would never leave us nor forsake us.

And as far as I bread, he has never promised us that we would be wealthy, but he has promised us to supply all of our needs according to his riches in glory.

And so, because you are armed with those promises, go home with all of your fear, with all of your worry, with all of your uncertainty, and go take a nap.

Because God will have the last laugh.

And if God will have the last laugh, you can sleep deeply.

There's a great old hymn.

I meant to find it in our hymn books.

Well, I'll just do it now, my goodness.

It better be in here, or we're going to go into a sudden business meeting and we're going to buy some new ones.

Let's see, let's get past the author's alphabetical index of tunes.

That does not help me.

I need the alphabetical index of titles.

And in your hymn book, this great hymn will be page number 338 in the key of A flat.

My key is the key of Wayflat.

This great old hymn from John Rippen.

Dr.

Horton John Rippon was John Gill's son-in-law.

I did not know that until just the other week.

This great old hymn, How Firm a Foundation.

Wish I could sing it.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in God's excellent word.

Then he asked this question: What more can he say?

Lord, y'all miss that too.

What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

What more can God say about your future?

What more can God say about his presence in your life?

What more can God promise you that he hasn't already promised you?

And then the last verse of the song, and I don't know if there's ever been anything outside of Scripture more beautiful in the English language than these words.

That soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose.

What that means is what Peter's doing.

That soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, the Lord says, I will not, I will not desert to expose.

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, every demon in hell could rise up against you.

But the Lord says, I will never, no, never, no, never forsake.

So let me finish preaching, we'll go take a nap.

What do you think?

Secondly, today, if God has the last laugh, then not only can you sleep deeply, but you should pray earnestly.

You can pray earnestly while Peter is languishing in prison.

Well, the church was praying.

I love that about this early church, don't you?

God granted that at Mud Creek Baptist Church.

Church, we'd be kind be the kind of people that when we know our friends are suffering, we are praying.

And they're praying.

And there's an interesting little piece of biblical trivia as the Bible tells us where they are praying.

The Bible says in verse 12 that they're praying in the house of Mary.

Now, there are like 15 and a half Marys in the New Testament.

And so the Bible tells us which Mary this is.

This is the Mary who has a son by the name of John Mark.

John Mark is the author of the Gospel of Mark.

Here, probably a very, very young man, maybe not even a grown man at this point, but he's there observing this prayer meeting.

And in verse number 25, you read that he gets so keyed up about what God's doing that he decides to go travel around a while for the sake of mission with Paul and Barnabas.

We'll talk more about that, Lord willing, in a couple weeks.

But they're praying.

And they're praying, earnestly praying.

God do a miracle, God work.

Sure enough, God does it.

It's so incredible that even Peter doesn't believe it.

The angel literally had to strike Peter to wake him up.

Did you see that?

Then the angel has to tell him, stand up, put your clothes on.

Huh?

And then the angel has to lead him out of prison.

Finally, after they get out of town, Peter wakes up and says, Oh yeah, verse 11, this actually did happen.

So he says this.

I know they're praying for me at the church.

I'm going to go to Mary's house and I'm going to let them know God answered.

Verse 13, Peter comes to the church, he knocks.

A servant girl by the name of Rhoda, evidently part of the church, stops her praying to go and do her job and to find out who's knocking at the door.

Maybe they were expecting a pizza delivery while they prayed, and she goes to see who's here.

She recognized Peter's voice.

And then because of her gladness, she doesn't let him in.

Praying, God answer, God move, God bring Peter to us, God restore him, God do a miracle.

Peter's here, I can't believe it, and runs away.

Then when she goes to the church that is praying for this exact same thing to happen, they say, nope, it can't be possible.

It's not Peter.

I don't know what you're seeing, but it's not Peter.

And she says, No, listen, I'm telling you, it's Peter.

I know his voice.

Evidently, Peter had a distinctive accent.

There's many things said about his voice in scripture.

And so finally they say, No, verse 15, no, you're just beside yourself.

You just lost it, you know, like you're slipping, Rhoda.

No, it's Peter.

They said, Well, it's his angel.

I take that to mean that their belief is, well, we're too late.

He's already been executed, and now he's a ghost, he's come back to church.

I don't know what they're thinking, but the one thing that's clear is that while they're praying, they evidently struggled to believe that God would actually answer their prayer.

And so I would say, God bless them for praying for Peter.

I would say, God forgive us for praying just like them.

Because we do, don't we?

God, I need you to move a mountain.

God, I need you to open a door.

God, I need you to heal.

God, I need you to work.

God, I need you to do this.

God, I need you.

And then the Lord does, and we're surprised by it.

Right?

We're blown away by the way God works.

I never would have fought.

God had that kind of power.

I never would have thought God cared about me that much.

I never would have believed that God would have done the things that He's done at my church or in my family or in my health.

I'm stunned.

Now it is sure that one of the key elements of a good joke is the element of surprise.

But how is it that we're continually surprised by God acting exactly the way he ought to act if what the Bible tells about him is true?

And I think this is an important lesson for us today because right now I know that some of you are praying for big things.

They look big to you.

In fact, they're so immeasurable that they are impossible to you.

They may be so infinite that you don't even know how to put it into words.

That's okay.

Because the Bible says to us in Ephesians chapter 3 that our God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above anything that we may be able to ask or think.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

I love that verse of scripture because it reminds me perpetually that the problem with my prayers is that they are always too small.

They can never rise to the level of God's power to answer.

They can never rise to the level of God's loving heart for me as his child.

Our prayers will never touch God's ability to hear and to answer.

But if it is true that God has the last laugh, you know what you should do?

You should pray like God is going to have the last laugh.

You should pray like God is going to have the last word.

You should pray like God is going to work and pray like God does miracles and believe God for those miracles because he will continually surprise you and take your breath away and turn this world upside down for his glory.

And we know that because, well, it's exactly what he does in this story.

So let me move quickly to the third consequence of this great doctrine that God is the one who laughs last and laughs loudest.

And that is this if God laughs loudest, you really can't take yourself too seriously.

You really can't take yourself so seriously.

See, this text is all about the evil machinations of a man who takes himself very seriously.

He's a king.

Kings have that way about them.

They take themselves seriously.

And they expect their citizens or subjects to take themselves seriously.

Well, God doesn't seem to take Herod all that seriously, does he?

I mean, Herod's mad about this.

And so when he finds out that Peter has uh broke out of the big house, verse number 19, he decides, well, if I have been defied, if my royal will has been violated, somebody's going to pay.

And so they do.

The soldiers who were supposed to be guarding Peter are executed.

And that doesn't seem to make Herod feel a whole lot better.

So he says, I need to get away.

I need to go breathe some fresh air.

And so he leaves from Judea, presumably in Jerusalem there, to go to Caesarea.

Just need a change of scenery.

Be around some more educated people that are going to support me.

We find out in verse number 20 that there had been some political back and forth between Herod as king of the Jews and the citizens of Tyre and Sidon who were part of his kingdom.

Those citizens of Tyre and Sidon had made friends with a guy by the name of Blastus.

Sounds like a name from American gladiators.

And I always like to see who lived through the early 90s.

They had made friends with his aide named Blastus, and so they come and they ask for some peace to solve this political issue.

The Bible says, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country, evidently there was an arrangement where Herod was responsible to make sure that the citizens of Tyre inside and had enough food to eat.

Evidently, he was not interested in holding up his into the bargain.

Because, this text makes clear, he is the kind of man who determines who lives and who dies.

He's taken the lives of his guards, wanted to take the life of Peter, took the life of James, the brother of John.

He determines who lives and who dies.

He determines who eats and who goes hungry.

He decides if you watch your children starve.

That's Herod.

And so to make his official proclamation, the Bible shows us this last picture of Herod in verse number 21.

He arrays himself in all of his royal apparel, orb and scepter, crown and jewels, in all of his most opulent finery.

He sits upon the throne of his power and he speaks ex cathedra as the king of the Jews.

He gives an oration to them.

And the people, probably knowing Herod's temperament and his fragile ego, begin to prop him up.

As his poll numbers rise.

And he feels refreshed and restored after all of that embarrassing episode with the Christians.

Now he's got these people right where he wants them.

As the echoes of their shouts land in his ears, when he speaks, it is not merely the voice of a man, it is the voice of a God.

And he starts to believe his own press.

Verse 23, an angel of the Lord, they're busy in this chapter.

Struck him.

Why?

Because he did not give glory to God.

He wanted it for himself.

He took himself seriously.

He didn't take God seriously.

And in verse number 23, the Bible says, He was eaten by worms and died.

That will let you know forever how seriously God took King Herod Agrippa II.

There it is.

And yet, the next verse says, the word of God grew and multiplied.

What you're supposed to do in Acts chapter number 12 is you are supposed to take the phrase that the people shout to Herod, this is the voice of a God and not a man.

And you are supposed to contrast that with what Scripture says about the word of God.

Where's the voice of Herod now?

Once laid in a grave, silenced by death, and whatever critters ate him alive.

But where is the word of God?

In Acts 25, 12, 25, it's growing and advancing, as Isaiah said, accomplishing his will in the world.

And 2,000 years later, Herod is still just as dead, and the word of God is still just as alive and powerful.

Why?

Because God has the last laugh.

And so this should be a sobering reminder for those of us that take ourselves so stinking seriously.

That like Herod want to sit on our thrones, that like Herod want to be seen in our finery, that like Herod, just love the sound of our own voice, that we want to rule our lives and control everyone around us.

God does not take you nearly as seriously as you take yourself.

In fact, I think you could make the case that the fundamental problem we have as sinners is that we take ourselves more seriously than God.

And God is opposed to those who lift themselves up in proud in pride, but he gives grace to the humble.

There's a great British Catholic author of the previous generation, G.K.

Chesterton, who said that Satan fell from heaven because of his gravity.

What he meant was Satan took himself too seriously.

And God didn't take any of that very seriously.

And so God dismissed him, cursed him, and exiled him.

Chesterton's point is that, like Satan, we take ourselves very seriously.

Because we have believed the lie that Satan has woven into the fabric of humanity in our sinful depravity that says, reach out and become what you're supposed to be.

Become like God, Satan told Eve.

Become like God, knowing good and evil.

Eve, you should take yourself more seriously.

And all of us have believed that lie, haven't we?

You know, my problem is nobody takes me seriously.

My problem is that other people don't see how important I am.

My problem, like Herod's, is that I'm on the throne, but I don't seem to have control.

I'm very important, you see.

We need to take ourselves seriously.

Eve believed that, you believed that.

And the Bible calls believing that lie sin.

Separation from the God who must be taken seriously.

But what does the Bible say to us happens in Genesis chapter 3?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Well, it tells us that when God saw that man sinned, God responds.

In curse?

Yes.

In judgment?

Sure.

With death in a sense.

But God also comes into the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 and verse number 15 with a promise.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And it is God Himself who preaches the very first gospel sermon in the Garden of Eden.

But he does not preach that sermon to the sinners that had rebelled against him.

No, he preaches that sermon to the serpent that had deceived them.

And the Lord says to Satan in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 and verse number 15, that one day from the seed of that woman that you deceived will come a deliverer who is going to write everything that you've ruined, and even though you may bruise his head, he is going to crush your head.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

What was God preaching to Satan and to Adam and Eve in that moment?

He was saying, I will have the last laugh.

Satan, you can squirm, you might even bite, but I will have the last laugh.

And if you keep reading the Bible, that theme, I believe, is continually unfolded for us.

God, in order to bring about that promised deliverer from Genesis chapter 3, appears to a man by the name of Abraham.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

In the era of the Chaldees, modern-day Iraq.

And says to Abraham, Abraham, dude, I know you're 75 years old, but guess what I'm going to do for you?

Even though you don't have any children yet, I am going to make of you a great nation.

And Abraham, with all of his God-given faith, says, Okay.

He believes a promise, follows the Lord.

It's not an easy promise to cling to.

Abraham zigs when he should have zigs.

Many mess steps along the way.

Until finally, Abraham is 99 years old and childless.

His wife is right there behind him.

They have no children.

Safe to say at that age, well, you buying your own diapers.

You're not worried about it.

Buying baby diapers.

And the Lord appears and reaffirms the promise and says to Abraham and his wife Sarah, next year.

Next year.

That baby's coming.

The Bible says that Sarah, who's off in the kitchen, hears God make that promise, and what does she do?

Ha!

Right.

I'm old, he's ancient.

There ain't no way this body is gonna produce a baby.

Well, sure enough, a year later, that woman should have been a great-great-grandma is holding her first child.

And do you know what they named that baby?

In Hebrew, yitzak.

The Hebrew word for laughter.

Why?

Because God had the last laugh, didn't he?

And he brought them in on the joke.

But to continue unfolding that promise throughout scripture, you see Abraham's descendants, his grandson Jacob.

Now there's a mess if there ever was one.

And God says, instead of blessing his older, somewhat more capable brother Esau, I'm going to bless Jacob.

He's a liar, he's a cheat, never met anybody he didn't want to fight, never made a fight, he wanted to win clean.

And God said, That's my guy.

That's good news for some of y'all.

That's my guy.

But Jacob is never really able to walk faithfully with the Lord.

He's a liar, a cheat.

Got a chip on his shoulder, mad at everybody all the time.

Until, of all things, God meets Jacob at a place called Penal and they have a wrestling match.

Now there's something spiritual in that.

God did not condescend to play golf with Jacob.

God did not condescend to play pickleball with Jacob.

God condescended to have a wrestling match with a predetermined end.

You take from that what you need to.

And during that wrestling match, Jacob laid hold of God and said, I will not let you go until you bless me.

Until finally, God, the Bible says, touch the hollow place in his thigh.

And for the rest of his life, Jacob had to walk with a limp.

But it was not until he walked with a limp that he was able to walk with God.

Why?

Because God had the last laugh and said, I will bless you.

And that blessing's going to hurt you.

But once you walk with a limp, you'll finally be able to walk consistently with me.

Jacob had a son, had a bunch of them actually, but had a son by the name of Joseph, the favorite, clear winner, most popular.

But all of his brothers hated him.

Faked his death, sold him into slavery in Egypt.

And yet Joseph had a dream that one day his brothers would bow down to him in some fashion.

They would come and grovel at his feet.

Joseph saw that clearly from the Lord, and yet here he is in prison, falsely accused of a crime that he did not commit.

Until ultimately he's exalted to be at the right hand of Pharaoh as the prime minister of Egypt.

And sure enough, those brothers come.

And he says, Well, I got a surprise for you.

I'm your brother that you thought was dead.

And they have to take that news back to their father, Jacob, who they had lied to for decades, that their son, that their brother had been killed.

And yet it is the case that while they try to tell Jacob that his son Joseph was alive, he can't believe it.

How could you believe it?

You've lived in this made-up myth for all of these years, and yet here's this story.

But the Bible says, I believe it's at the end of Genesis chapter number 46, that when Jacob saw the wagons that Joseph had sent, when he saw proof that the son who had been betrayed in the house of his brothers had been exalted to the right hand of power, when he saw proof that the son was alive, he said, It is enough.

Let's go to Egypt.

Why?

Because God had the last laugh.

The story moves into the book of Exodus.

And I know it's getting late today.

If y'all need to go, go ahead, but I'm gonna preach because I'm having a good time.

And I'm only in Exodus.

We've got a long way to go before we get to where we are.

The Bible says that Abraham's descendants, 400 years enslaved in Egypt.

You know the story, right?

400 years of agony, prayer, misery.

God help us.

God finally sends a deliverer by the name of Moses who tells the Lord, Look, I've got to stutter.

I don't speak very plain.

I don't know if I can do this.

The Lord says in the burning bush, dude, it ain't about what you can do, it's about who I am.

Obey me and follow me.

Moses does, and systematically, one by one, God humbles the gods of Egypt until finally, God, in his most miraculous display of power, I read about it this morning, passed through Egypt in death and destruction.

But while he passed through Egypt in death and destruction, he passed over the Israelites who had taken the blood of a lamb.

Somebody help me, they'd taken the blood of a lamb, and they'd placed it over the doorpost of their house.

And God said, When I see the blood of that lamb, I will not pass through you in judgment, but I will pass over you in mercy.

And then the Bible says, 300,000 men, plus their wives and their children, walked out of Egypt.

And just in a few days they find themselves looking out over the Red Sea with an impossible barrier in front of them, with Pharaoh's armies behind them.

And God says to Moses, when Moses says, Well, Lord, you got us into a good mix now.

What are we going to do?

God says to Moses, don't just do something, stand there.

That's what he tells him.

Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

Take your rod, hold it out over the Red Sea, and those two million slaves are going to walk through on dry ground.

They won't even have even have mud on their sandals.

And sure enough, they walk through.

And sure enough, when the last one steps foot onto the other side of the Red Sea, the Bible says that those great walls of water where God had made a highway, flooded the Egyptian armies, that on the other side those those slaves are singing praise to God, saying, The Lord has delivered and he's had the last laugh.

And I wish that I had time this morning to tell you story after story about how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace, and the only thing that burned on them were the handcuffs that held them in place.

I'd like to tell you about Nebuchadnezzar, whom God humbled and stuck him out in a barnyard aiming grass like a donkey for seven years.

And I'd like to tell you about story after story, but I've got one more to tell you.

And that story is that our God is so committed to having the last laugh over all of our human seriousness, over all of our sinful attempts to make ourselves so important, after all of our prideful self-aggrandizement, God looks and says, I will have the last laugh.

And how does he do it?

Well, he does it while the most powerful man in the world sits on a throne in the Roman Empire by the name of Caesar Augustus.

And the Bible tells us that thousands of miles away, in a place that nobody had ever heard of outside of Israel, in a manger named Bethlehem, God's own son and Mary's baby boy, was laid in that manger to save us from our sins.

And the Bible tells us that he grew up and that he lived the life that all of us should have lived, but none of us could have lived.

And that after he was baptized, the Spirit of God led him into the wilderness for 40 days.

He did not eat and he did not drink, and he was tempted by Satan, who has tempted all of us, victimized all of us, and made all of us guilty.

But temptation after temptation, Jesus had the last laugh.

Don't you know the story?

And he said, I will not live but by bread alone.

You shall not tempt the Lord your God.

You'd better worship him and him alone.

And he alone walked through that valley and walked through that desert of that temptation and came out victorious the other side because he will have the last laugh over Satan.

And throughout his life, he had the last laugh over diseases that he cured, he had the last laugh over death as he resurrected, he had the last laugh over demons that he exercised until finally all of hell manipulated the worst in man.

And what happened?

They knelt him to a cross.

As my friend Dr.

Reginald Calvert would say, they laid him low, they stretched him wide, and they hung him high.

But when they hung him there on Calvary's skull-shaped rock, while men walked by and said, Well, if he is the Son of God, why doesn't he save himself?

As men walk by and spat upon him after they had plugged the beard from his cheeks.

My Bible tells me that he looked over at the thief that was dying with him on the right hand and said, You know, today you will be with me in paradise.

Because Jesus, despising the shame and enduring the cross, said to that sinner who hoped in God's promises, Listen, I'm gonna laugh last, I'm gonna bring you in on that joke.

And we may be dead before the sun goes down, but that's not the end of our story.

Sure enough, they were both dead before the sun went down.

The Bible says that he spent all night Friday night in that grave.

He spent all morning Saturday in the grave, all night Saturday night.

But the word of God says that early Sunday morning, before the sun came up, he walked out of that borrowed tomb.

And then the Bible says that six weeks or so after he walked out of that borrowed tomb, that his disciples stood on a Judean hillside and they watched him ascend back to his father.

And the word says that he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high to receive from his father a kingdom that will never end and dominion that will endure throughout all the ages.

Why?

Because God will have the last laugh.

And that name, the name of Jesus, that was ridiculed, that man who was spat upon, that man who had a cut on a mud, that man who had a crown of thorns put upon his brow.

The Bible says that God has given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Why?

Because God said, I will have the last laugh.

I will have the last laugh.

And so it is.

Brothers and sisters, if God has done all of that, quit taking yourself so seriously.

Take him seriously.

And find the freedom to laugh at yourself.

Because the Bible says that even when God spoke creation into existence, the angels sang with joy.

Jesus taught us that when one sinner repents, there is joy in the presence of the angels.

More than 99 righteous persons who don't need repentance.

They're happy in heaven because they take God seriously, and they've quit taking themselves seriously.

They're peaceful in heaven because they know that there's rest in Jesus.