Genesis 21:1–7 (ESV)
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 a hundred 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 borne him a son in his old age.
I grew up watching the A-Team with my parents, often on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday afternoon. And it was one of those shows which, no matter how crazy the stunts were or how ridiculous the plan seemed, in the end, the A-Team could always find a way to solve a problem. And the catchphrase of the leader of the team, Hannibal, he would always say, after everything had worked out just perfectly, "I love it when a plan comes together."
Now that's exactly what we see in this passage. After all the strugglings and all the wanderings and all the various times Abram tried to sell off his wife as his sister, in the end, the plan comes together. God had promised that Sarah would conceive a son, Isaac, and this is what we see in our passage. Isaac is actually born. This is the promise that has been kept by God on the exact timetable that God had said. The verse wanted to remind us of this. The Lord visited Sarah at the time of which he had spoken. So the writer of the story reminds us about the timing, the conception and the birth. It all happens precisely as God had said all the way back in Genesis 17, verse 21.
It looked impossible. Here we have this barren woman. She's 90 years old. Abraham is over 100 years old at this point. And yet God is a covenant keeping God who keeps his promises. And so in the end, the plan comes together. Isaac is finally born.
Now we read all about how this laughing thing happens. The word Isaac means "he laughs." Abram laughed in 17 verse 17. Sarah laughed skeptically in chapter 18 verse 12 to 15. And now everyone laughs with joy as we see in this passage in verse 6 over the fact that this baby has been born. So this birth, this promise that has been kept by God, turns these cynical chuckles of Sarah into actual real worshipful celebration. And it actually immortalizes the fact that God has had the last laugh, if you like, over this disbelief. So there's this kind of theological pun happening within the story. God has caused laughter and joy to come out of barrenness.
This passage also reminds us of God's immense creative power that he can create out of nothing. God brings life where there was none. She was barren, but now she's not. In the passage just before this, we read about how God ceased barrenness in all these other women. God can create out of nothing. There's a kind of new creation happening here. It's an echo back to the beginning of Genesis where God also created life and in fact the whole universe out of nothing. Now God is creating life and in fact ultimately the chosen promised line through which he will save the universe out of nothing. There is this covenant line that God keeps his promises. He had made a choice to save the world through Abraham and his offspring, and now he has brought it about through the birth of Isaac.
Now if you've been following along over the last couple of days, you'll see that other people have also had nothing, had no children, and so they went about their own plans and through their own means to conceive children, and they succeeded. But that's not what's happening here. There's no human ingenuity and there's no plotting or secret dalliances with people who are drunk in order to conceive a child here. No, it is simply that God has acted on his promise. And because of that, blessing will ultimately come to the whole world.
Now why should this matter to us? What does this have to do with us? Well I think maybe one of the first and most obvious things is that we need to recognize that by this time Sarah and Abraham have been waiting for 25 years since God made his promise way back in chapter 12 of Genesis to where they are now. There is this massive long delay that separates God's initial promise and now the ultimate fulfillment of that promise.
And sometimes in our life, we can feel like there are massive long delays in the plan that we have for our life as well. It could be singleness. It could be illness. It could be, you know, a ministry setback. It could feel like a dead end job or a circumstance in which we feel that just nothing good is happening. And we can't see that God is working through that time within us. But this passage reminds us that God is not slow to act as some understand slowness. In fact, God can use these periods of long, long waiting to bring about in us a change that we need in his sovereign will, that he has been working within us even though we could not see it.
Sometimes they can feel like a dead end, but Isaac's birth here reminds us that God often delays until just the right time. His delays need to kind of ripen into a better and more ultimate fulfillment of what he's doing.
Now, this is important for us because in our life, we live in quite a cynical and immediate gratification kind of world. We say things like, "I'll believe that when I see it." "I'll believe that when I have the proof right in front of me." Or unless I can see the proof right in front of me, I'm just not going to trust in that thing. This passage encourages us to trust in God's promises even when we can't see them, specifically because we can't see them. God might be doing something in us that is not visible, that we can't see until it ultimately finds its fruit, maybe, like in this case, 25 years down the track.
Now remember that this is part of a bigger story of Abraham and the blessing that he's going to bring. God promises him three things. He's going to make him into a great nation. He's going to provide land for all his descendants through the land of Israel. And he's going to make a blessing for all the nations through his offspring. And yet the ultimate fulfillment of this promise of God doesn't come into fruition for another thousand odd or more years. It doesn't ultimately get fulfilled in its fullness until Jesus is born at just the right time.
And so after this, you know, the Babylonian empire had to rise and fall. The Roman empire had to rise. Jesus had to be born into a time where there were roads and relative safety on the roads for evangelism to happen. It is only at that point that all nations ultimately become blessed through the seed, through the offspring of Abraham. And so just because something is taking time does not mean that God is not going to eventually do it. Or maybe it's, in fact, the waiting for the thing to be done that is really the blessing that God has for us.
And if we've been reading this in context, we see that the tendency of human nature is to want to hurry up God's plan, to do our own thing in order to create the thing that we want, to run off and fulfill the promises of God in our own way. And yet again, here we see that God will act when God will act. God will bring about the things that he wants to bring about when he wants to bring them about. And we can trust in that plan, even though we can't see exactly how that's going to work out in our life just yet.
Let me pray. Lord, we thank you that your clock never runs late. Your promises never fall short. Eventually, you will do what you will do in your perfect timing. Lord, we confess that we are limited creatures who are time-bound, and so we want everything now, straight away, and on our timeline. We pray that you will forgive us for that tendency, that you will help us to trust in your timing, and that we will look to you for the strength we need and the courage we need to see this through to the end. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.