You have heard it said, “He who laughs last, laughs best.” Let me expand on that: I may laugh, you may laugh, but God will have the last and best laugh, for God’s purposes will be served.
Laughter. There are all sorts of reasons to laugh. Some will laugh out of frustration; unable to do what they want to do, theirs will be a cynical laughter. But God will laugh last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
Others will laugh in denial; unwilling to face what is happening, unable to see positives, theirs will be a sarcastic, hopeless laughter. But God will laugh last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
One of the signs of health in senior adults is the ability to laugh. You have to be able to laugh at thinning hair, rotting teeth, bulging waistlines, and falling arches, or else you will go crazy. And that doesn’t even count things like .. uh, mm, ah, what do you call it, can’t get the word out .. oh, things like memory loss! Without a sense of humor, no one is going to make it through the aging process. I don’t know about you, but as for me, even though – let the record show – even though I am not yet an official senior adult, I can no longer leap tall buildings with a single bound. I can no longer read the fine print in a salesman’s contract from across a crowded room. I can no longer dazzle lovely ladies with my movie-star looks. And the fact that I could not do those things at age 22 any better than I can at age 62 does not erase the reality – that aging takes things away from us. Laughter is our survival tool. Laughing at how ridiculous we look as we age is one way to survive aging.
Why, you know, you have to be able to laugh at things in order to stick around for a lot of years. Take marriage, for example. Or, as the old comedian Henny Youngman used to say, “Take my wife – please!”. People who have been married for forty and fifty years tell me that they have gone through all kinds of scrapes and scrambles. They report that it is not easy to live with the same person, day after day, month after interminable month, unless you can laugh at some of the stuff that happens in married life! How else are you going to deal with arguments over who burned the toast? How else will you manage the ever-lengthening honey-do list during the height of the football season? You will have to learn to laugh if you are going to deal with marriage over many years.
Now you must understand that Margaret and I have only been married 39 years, and so our first fight has not yet come. We haven’t gotten past the honeymoon stage, so we might have an argument in the next ten or twenty years. I’m looking forward to some good laughs out of that. Hmm. From what I am looking at now, the honeymoon might be over this afternoon!
I have a story to tell you today about two senior adults who did some laughing. I guess their laughter helped them with their burdens. But just remember, there are many reasons to laugh. I may laugh, you may laugh, but God will have the last and best laugh, for God’s purposes will be served. Some will laugh out of frustration; unable to do what they want to do, theirs will be a cynical laughter. Others will laugh in denial; unwilling to face what is happening, unable to see positives, theirs will be a sarcastic, hopeless laughter. But God will laugh last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
I
When God told Abraham, who was already in his 90’s, that his equally elderly wife Sarah would give birth to a child, Abraham laughed. He laughed in frustration, because he had wanted for so long to fulfill his destiny. But it seemed obvious that he was not going to do so. And so cynicism welled up in Abraham’s heart, and he laughed.
God said to Abraham, "As for … Sarah … I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. …" Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" … God said, "No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.
Some of us laugh out of frustration. A few years ago, on the “Saturday Night Live” show, there was an ongoing feature called “The Whiners”. The Whiners were a family for whom nothing went right, everything went wrong. They dealt with it by constant whining – not just complaint, but literally a grating, ear-splitting whine. “Mom, I didn’t want prunes for dinner.” “But I didn’t have anything else, your father didn’t bring home any money.” “I didn’t bring home any money because you took too much time in the bathroom and made me late for work.” “I took so much time in the bathroom because all we ever eat is prunes.” Round and round they would go, whining about life’s frustrations. Cynical laughter, complaint, frustration, it’s all the same. We get stuck in believing that nothing is going to change, that nothing can be done, that nothing will happen. Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born … to Sarah, who is ninety years old …?” Well, ha, ha, ha to that!
But the laughter of frustration doesn’t take God into account. The laughter of cynicism writes God out of the equation. Abraham’s laughter, is a whining assumption that if anything is going to get done, he’ll have to do it, other people are in his way, and God doesn’t count. When we laugh and whine in frustration, we have written God off.
Some while ago, one of our oldest members celebrated a milestone birthday. Her family and her friends gathered around. After everyone else had paid nice little tributes, she rose to her feet and began a hilariously funny report about all of her boy friends. She spoke of her companion, Arthur Itis, who never seemed to leave her side. She introduced us to Bill Payments, who always wanted more than she had to give. She regaled us with stories about spending her nights with Ben Gay. And just when she had us weeping with laughter, do you know what she did? She hit us with a magnificent witness about the God who had been her strength and support for ninety years, the God who had never failed her yet, the God who had yet more for her to do! What a magnificent testimony! What a glorious perspective! When we think it’s all over, and we are tempted to focus on all the things we cannot do, our cynical laughter, our whining, can be turned by our God into sheer joy! The key is to believe that God is not finished with us. The key is to let God be God and do what He wants. And it’ll be joy!
Abraham fell on his face and laughed, “Can a child be born to [us old, used-up, wasted souls?] But God said, you just get up off your face, Abraham. Look here and see what I’m going to do. Cut the whining, Abraham. Old as you are, if you will only see what I am about, you’ll have plenty of joy. You’ll have plenty of laughter.
Some will laugh out of frustration; unable to do what they want to do, theirs will be a cynical laughter. But God will laugh last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
II
If Abraham laughed out of frustration, on the other hand, Sarah laughed in denial. Sarah’s is a very interesting case, and it has our names written all over it. Abraham may have laughed out of frustration, but his wife Sarah laughed in denial and in sarcasm. She was unwilling to face what was happening, unable to see anything positive. And so her laughter, the laughter of denial, was sarcastic and hopeless.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old … So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband 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 wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. He said, [God said], "Oh yes, you did laugh."
Isn’t that a remarkable text? But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. God said, "Oh yes, you did laugh." “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Denial is one of the diseases of advancing age. We just do not want to admit that we can’t do all that we once did. So we cover up. We hide our heads in the sand. We hope that no one notices that the old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be. Denial. But that is a spiritual issue. That is an issue around trusting God.
This thing of late-in-life pregnancies is interesting. I wonder what Sarah was thinking. Do you suppose that in addition to her astonishment she was thinking, “This will be too hard on me.”? Or might it be that her reaction was something like, “What will everybody say?” Some friends of ours, who thought they had already raised their family, discovered that they were going to be blessed again, and announced their news with a little card which read, “Please welcome our little bungle from heaven.” There’s health in that laughter; it says that despite whatever we had planned, this new challenge is a gift of God. But so often we do not want to face what is happening as we age, and we do not see it as a gift of God, because we have not yet learned to trust Him in all things. We laugh in denial, sarcastic because we see nothing positive in our challenges.
I must tell you that over and over again I have seen one great truth work out – that when we pray in faith, seeking God’s will and trusting God, He gives us what we need. I have seen someone pray for insight about what she should do in the next phase of her life, and two days later a job offer is dropped in her lap. I have seen someone pray for a resolution of his financial problems, and within a week, help is right there. I have witnessed prayer warriors within this church praying for certain spiritual issues and certain leadership questions, and the answers have begun to come even greater than anything we could have imagined on our own! Did you hear God Himself say it in this text? “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Of course not!
The issue is trusting Him. Trust Him even when your powers are failing and even when new and serious challenges show up.
If our laughter is the laughter of denial, we will miss what God wants to give us. If our laughter is Sarah’s laughter, the laughter of fear, we will not understand what God wants to give us. One of our members told me this week about what she has been through medically. She has been through a number of months of physical and emotional challenge. But she said, “You know, I have a group of friends who don’t understand how I’ve made it through. My friends are all bright, intelligent, and well educated. They have good jobs and lots going for them. But, “ she said, “they are completely lost.” Did you hear that? “Completely lost.” Now bear in mind that this is not preacher talk; this is what one of you said. “My friends are completely lost, they are coming apart, because they do not have faith. They do not have God in their lives, and they don’t understand how anybody could make it through what I’ve been through.” And then she laughed – but it wasn’t Sarah’s laugh – she laughed with joy and said, “Knowing that you need something else to do, I’ve already told that we’re going to set up some sessions so that my pastor can teach my skeptical friends how to trust God.”
Wow! But now watch! Watch for the seductive laughter of denial, faithless denial. When she told me what she wanted me to do, I was the next person laughing. I laughed out loud, saying, “Yeah, right, who, me? You think I could get through to that crowd?” I laughed out loud – not seeing that my laughter was Sarah’s laughter. It was the laughter of denial, the laughter of sarcasm, the laughter that says, “Who, me?”. I didn’t trust God for such a challenge?
Oh, great God! “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Why can I not just trust Him beyond my self-doubt? Why can I not just trust Him to dismiss my fears? “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Some will laugh in frustration like Abraham. Others will laugh in denial, like Sarah. Unwilling to face what is happening, unable to see positives, theirs will be a sarcastic, hopeless laughter. But God will laugh last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
III
Abraham laughed; Sarah laughed; but listen now to God’s laughter. Listen! Can you hear laughter and joy from the throne of heaven?
The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age … Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son … Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me."
Perhaps you know that the name Isaac means laughter. That is the literal translation of the Hebrew word, yitzhak. Read the text like this, “Abraham gave the name Laughter to his son.” “Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Laughter was born to him.” And what do Abraham and Sarah say now? “God has brought laughter for me.” Because God is accomplishing His purposes, there is going to be joy. Because at last they were open to what God wanted to do, there was joy.
I submit to you that the real thrill in growing older when we trust God and know that His purposes will be served. Burdens will be laughed away when we discover that God is at work, and that His intention is always good news. Whatever burdens we carry, whatever challenges we face, God has a purpose in them. God is always about doing something redemptive. And God wants to use senior adults to help set the foundation for His future. Laugh away that burden! For there is good news! Very good news! God has something for us to do, and we can do it.
Now that does not mean that all pain is gone. That does not mean it will be easy. I’m reasonably confident that Sister Sarah, somewhere in the task of giving birth in her ninetieth-plus year, screamed and moaned. It wasn’t laughter. But she saw fulfillment in it, and it was bearable. She laughed away that burden. It was worth it. It was the path to joy. Just like some of you, grandparents raising your grandchildren – it’s a burden, but you have said, “This child brings a whole lot of joy to us.” The path to authentic joy lies in knowing and doing God’s will.
Laughing away the burdens. Oh, this does not mean some sort of whistling in the dark Pollyanna primrose path. Sorry about this, Maria, but just “thinking of a few of my favorite things” does not get it done! But, I tell you, if God chooses to give you something extraordinary to do for the Kingdom, no matter your age, listen for God’s laughter. Listen for God’s joy! It will come rolling down from the throne of heaven. I may laugh, and you may laugh, but God laughs last and best, for God’s purposes will be served.
How do I know? To what have I listened? Where do I hear the laughter?
Because we look to Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him endured even a cross, disregarding its shame; and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
At the cross there is no frustration, no cynicism. For Jesus Christ, in and through His pain, accomplished what God had set Him to do. And there was joy.
At the cross there is no denial, no sarcasm. For Jesus Christ, bearing our burdens and paying the full price in His blood, trusted the Father. And there was joy.
And on the third day, He rose again. On the third day, He knew complete joy. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Come to the Lord’s Table. Open your eyes to see God’s joy; open your ears to hear God’s laughter, laughing away the burdens.
