God Gets The Last Laugh

God gets the last laugh. If you are in a covenantal relationship with God through faith, time and circumstances are irrelevant in terms of him fulfilling his promises to you. He will. He is covenantally faithful. And while your faith may laugh because of limited understanding, or even in sarcastic doubt, God is greater than the circumstances upon which you have chosen to focus. God is true, and he will bring to pass every promise he has given you. He will get the last laugh.

The Journey // Focus: Genesis 17:17-19

Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. “How could I become a father at the age of 100?” he thought. “And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?” So Abraham said to God, “May Ishmael live under your special blessing!” But God replied, “No—Sarah, your wife, will give birth to a son for you. You will name him Isaac, and I will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant.

God gets the last laugh—always!

While the New Living Translation renders Genesis 17:17, “Abraham laughed to himself in disbelief,” the New International Version leaves off the word “disbelief,” simply saying, “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself,.” Whatever it’s motive, why the laughter? Abraham was understandably wondering how a son would be born to him, as God had promised in this encounter, and well as in previous ones, when he was nearly one hundred years old and not getting any younger, and his wife was not far behind, hovering around ninety.

Abraham laughed, but so did Sarah. In the next chapter, the Lord shows up yet again, and yet again reaffirms the covenant promise of God. In response, Sarah, eves-dropping from the flap of her tent, laughs to herself, but this time, her laughter is met with Divine rebuke. (Genesis 18:9-15) What was the difference—Abraham’s laugher was met with divine explanation; Sarah’s with divine admonition?

Flat out, Sarah didn’t believe the word of the Lord. She looked at the circumstances of her life, she’s childless at ninety, and chose to believe that condition ruled the day instead of the covenantal promise of God, with whom our age, or any other human reality, is not a factor. On the other hand, Abraham’s laughter most likely was a reflection not of his lack of faith (remember, in Genesis 15:6 he had believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness) as much as it was a limitation of his faith.

As you read the narrative of Abraham, God is progressively revealing himself and his covenantal promises/demands to this chosen man. Abraham, like you and me, often wondered, i.e., laughed with incredulity, as to how God will pull this or that off. The truth is, we have faith in God, we just don’t have the faith of God yet. But when our response turns to sarcastic doubting, a mocking, bitter pffft, which is likely the kind of laughter that privately exploded from Sarah’s mouth, we are in danger of divine displeasure.

But you’ve got to love God’s response to Abraham’s limited faith, and even Sarah’s critical doubting? God says, “you are to name the baby boy Isaac.” Don’t forget, Abraham is ninety-nine and Sarah is ninety. It has been thirteen years since the Almighty made the covenant with Abraham that if this chosen man would simply trust God, he and his wife would become the parents of many nations and the very human fountainhead of universal blessing. Yet over a decade later, in spite of the covenantal couple’s advanced age and persistent barrenness, God says, “name him Isaac,” which means, “God laughs.”

The point being, God gets the last laugh. If you are in a covenantal relationship with God through your faith in him, time and circumstances are irrelevant in terms of him fulfilling his promises to you. He will. He is a covenantally faithful God. And while your faith may laugh because of limited understanding, or even in sarcastic doubt, God is greater than the circumstances upon which you have chosen to focus. God is true to his Word, and he will bring to pass every promise he has given you. He will get the last laugh.

If you have expressed a lack of faith, or recognize that your perspective has suffered limited faith, I would recommend you do what Abraham did when the Lord spoke his promises to him: he fell down to the ground—a sign of respect and worship.

Even if you are still struggling with the impossibility of your circumstances and the slowness of God’s promises—if you are laughing at the impossibility of God’s blessing in your life—by faith, bow down and worship the One who is covenantally faithful, who always, always, always gets the last laugh!