And the Lord appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 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 3 and said, “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, 5 while I 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.” 6 And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” 7 And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. 8 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. 9 They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” 10 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. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” 13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ 14 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.”
Abraham's wife Sarah must have known the promise that God had made to her husband. How could he have kept such amazingly good news from her? After being childless her entire life — and enduring the pain of the stigma that her culture attached to being barren — Sarah was going to have a son. What wonderful news for her! But it was as improbable as it was wonderful. She was very old, well past the point in life when women can have children. As far as everything that she knew from her knowledge and experience in the world, it was impossible for her to conceive and bear a child — and she had a lifetime of evidence to prove it.
It certainly didn't help Sarah have confidence in God's promise when what He had told Abraham would happen didn't come to pass right away. As the days faded into months and then into years, the promise became more and more unlikely for Sarah. As the improbability of conceiving a child grew in her mind into an impossibility, she decided to give God some help. Convinced that it was too hard for God for her to bear her husband's child, Sarah offered Abraham her servant as a surrogate mother, a temptation that Abraham found too appealing to resist. But the child born to Hagar was not the child whom God had promised.
In time — His time — God visited Abraham and Sarah to let them know that He was about to fulfill His promise. Years had passed, hope had faded, and circumstances had validated Sarah's doubts. Her dismissive laugh brought God's stern rebuke, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
We know Sarah's heart. We share her faith. We rejoice in the promises of God when they are fresh in our hearts and minds. We are confident that God is greater than our circumstances and that He can do what is impossible for us. But as time wears on and the situations in our lives are so different that what we understood His promises to be and all of the things that we see, hear, and experience testify that those promises will not -- even cannot -- come to be, we lose heart. We give into the temptation to think that God isn't going to do what He said He would do. Weak in faith and challenged by the world, we convince ourselves that our problems, challenges, and dilemmas are not only too much for us to resolve but that making something good out of them is even too hard for the Lord.
While we don't often share in Sarah's laughter in the midst of our disappointments with God, we do share the same doubts, confusion, and lack of confidence that she experienced when God's promise seemed cruelly ridiculous. Like her, we have our own ways of giving God some help when we convince ourselves that His promises are really to hard for Him to keep for us. And like her, when we lose patience with God and take action on our own we end up making a mess of things. Yet, despite Sarah's unworthiness, God gave her the son that He had promised. Isaac's birth is a beautiful demonstration that God's promises are not only real but that they are kept according to His faithfulness, not ours. In the fulfillment of His promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah, God was picturing for us the fulfillment of another promised Son. In an even more unlikely way through a more unlikely woman, the Seed promised long before Sarah laughed at God's impossible promise was born into our world. Because we struggle with firmly believing God's promises, have failed to live according to His Word and His will, and had no hope of doing the impossible work that was necessary for our salvation, God gave us a Son, His Son. The culmination of all that God had promised -- in the Garden, through His covenants, and by His prophets -- this Son has proven that nothing is too hard for God.
Sometimes we can take a look around at the things that are taking place and know what’s coming next. It’s as though the events are road signs telling us what’s directly ahead of us. But there are other times when the signs are there but we don’t see them for what they are. Jesus took people to task for that. He pointed out that, while they could determine the weather based on the signs around them, they didn’t see what was about to happen in their lives spiritually even though He had laid it all out in front of them. “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” He asked them. He could ask the same question of us.
