Un/Belief – “Faith, Sex and Laughter” 

If you’re going to discover a ‘full life,’ you’re going to have to grow in your faith – because the full life that God meant for you to have is a life of faith. As we’ve defined it in this series, faith is simply “living out what you believe,” and that process of living out our faith includes taking “steps of faith” that indicate (and reinforce) our faith commitment – our decision to trust God. In an odd story from Genesis 18, we see that sometimes God waits for us to take that step before doing something “wonderful.”

1.  God Will Put a Next Step in Front of You (Genesis 18:1-5; Gen 18:9-12)

• As we saw last week, God had promised Abraham that we was going to make his family into a “great nation,” and had sealed that promise with a covenant ceremony – even though Abraham and his wife Sarah were very old and had no children of their own. Genesis 18 picks up the story almost 15 years later, when Abraham was almost 100 years old, and Sarah around 90.
• In the story, God (in the form of “three men”) appears to Abraham near his tent, and Abraham greets them with traditional hospitality. They ask, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” and then this: “I will return next year and Sarah will have a son.” Listening from their tent, “Sarah laughed silently to herself.”
• Sarah’s laugh was a bitter one; she was old and well beyond child-bearing years. She had no children – a source of shame for a woman in their culture. And, apparently, she didn’t know about God’s promise to Abraham that they would have a son of their own one day – so her laugh is sad and bitter, the laugh of a woman who is “worn out.” “How could I enjoy such pleasure?” she asks.
• Interestingly, the Hebrew word translated as “pleasure” here actually refers to sexual pleasure – so the passage is making the additional point that Abraham hadn’t been doing his part to make God’s promise come true. God promised a son with Sarah, but Abraham hadn’t trusted that promise enough to do the actually activity (i.e., having sex with her) to make that promise even possible.
• Sometimes God puts a small step of faith in front of us that will lead to something bigger – and then waits for us to take it. He wants (and promises) to do amazing things in our life, but sometimes waits to see if we’ll do our part first before he truly blesses us. So the question we should always be asking ourselves is, “Is there something in my life that God has invited me to do that I’m not yet doing?”

2. You Will Know You’re Walking by Faith When Wonder Returns  (Genesis 18:13-15)
   
   • At some point in the story, Abraham and Sarah realize that the words of the “visitors” are the words of God himself. Abraham realizes he’s been “busted” for not telling Sarah about God’s promise (and for not faithfully acting on it), and Sarah denies that she laughed after finally hearing that promise. 
   • In the center of the passage, God reminds them of the promise he’d made, capped with the rhetorical question, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” Interestingly, the Hebrew word translated as “hard” or “difficult” could also be translated as “wonderful” – i.e., “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”
   • It can be hard for us to think about God doing “wonderful” things for us. We get that he can do anything – he created everything out of nothing, after all – but the idea of him doing “wonderful” things for us is a stretch, mostly because we convince ourselves we’re unworthy – and “worn out.”
   • When we live lives of faithfulness, the wonder and awe and dreams of “What might God do next?” return to us. By our faithful walk – taking the little steps of faith he puts in front of us – we live out our belief that nothing is too “wonderful” for God to do for us – if we’ll just trust him. After all, he gave us the wonderful, amazing gift of grace on the cross – “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE

These passages may provide additional insights related to the subject of this week’s message. All verses are NLT unless otherwise noted.

Matthew 7:9-11; Romans 8:31-32; Ephesians 2:8; Philippians 4:6-7, 19; James 1:16-17

Video of the Week: Angel of the LORD by the Bible Project

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

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1. Do you find the big miracles of the Bible (e.g., the Great Flood, the Exodus story, Abraham and Sarah’s miraculous conception of Isaac) to be easy or hard to believe in?  Explain your answer.

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2. Do you believe that God still does miracles (that is, things that can only be explained supernaturally) in the world today?  Why or why not?

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3. Read Genesis 18:9-12 again? As mentioned in the message, the language here indicates that Abraham and Sarah had not had sex since God made (and reconfirmed) his promise that Sarah would give birth to Abraham’s son. From a spiritual perspective, why do you think Abraham failed to take this critical “step of faith”?

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4. God created everything out of nothing, simply by saying the words of creation (“Let there be…”). Why, then, did he need Abraham to take a physical step of faith in order to fulfill his promise of giving Abraham and Sarah a son of their own?  

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5. Do you expect God to do wonderful things in your life?  Why or why not?

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6. To allow God to do those “wonderful” things, is there something in your life that God has invited you to do (a step of faith) that you’re not doing yet?  Explain your answer.

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