Northside Church - Sydney
I Saw That Snigger
I'm listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. I've entitled this message. I saw that sneaker and you're probably thinking, what's that all about? You'll have to get the passage to understand this. But we go back into the Old Testament for this incident tonight. We go back into the book of Genesis. And people say, well, you know, Graham, what's the Old Testament, is that really where it's at? Well, it's not where it's at. The New Testament is where it's at in terms of the revelation of Jesus. But you can't understand the New Testament until you have an understanding of what was going on in the Old Testament. And here's Sarah, the wife of Abraham. And she's the focal point of our attention tonight. And the reading, if you have your eyes on there or your iPad, or if you still carry one of these, then you might like to follow on Genesis chapter 18 verses 1 to 15 features a couple of well-known Old Testament characters, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, look at this. The Lord appeared to Abraham near the gate, sorry, near the great trees of memory while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. You get the picture? Abraham looked up and he saw three men standing nearby when he saw them. He hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and he bowed low to the ground, very hospitable character. Abraham didn't quite know what he was in for. He said, "If I found favor in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by, let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed and then go on your way now that you've come to your servant." Very well they answered, do as you say. So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, quickly said, "Get three seers of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread." Then he rendered the herd and selected a choice, tend to calf and gave it to the servant who hurried to prepare it. He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set those before them and while they ate he stood near them under a tree. Where is your wife Sarah? They asked him. There in the tent he said, "I will surely return to you." This is the Lord. "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out, my master is old, will I now have this pleasure, this pleasure of being a mum?" Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." Sarah was afraid. She lied and said, "I did not laugh," but he said, "Yes you did. You did laugh." You have to look pretty hard to get humour in the Old Testament. This is probably about as close as it comes to a humorous incident and we will unpack some of that in these coming moments. Look guys, everybody does this. We all have our own ways of doing it. I am talking about the sarcastic snigger, the little sort of laugh that you give under your breath as an expression of your disbelief in something. In the last 12 months, I got a letter from a bank, one of my banks, which said, "We're increasing our fees and this is in response to customer demand." I went, "Yeah, right." Then they go on, "This will actually benefit you as our customer." Then you get a similar one from a telco. "We're increasing our fees. We're changing our packages. We're moving certain things, but this is in response to customer demand. This will in fact will be of benefit to you as one of our customers." You go, "Ride." None of us believe that. You're a politician, an outrageous promise, maybe just before an election. You know deep down, they're not intending to fulfill that promise. We give our little, "Ride." I'd love to pass the microphone around and see how you do your snigger. I'm sure we have some fascinating ones here. I love it when you, when you, when you, when you, we do something in my family where it's sort of like a drinking and then the family will say something, something will say something out raising you. Spew the drink out. Yeah, I love that. We do it outside. It's just a little agnew custom. Now, guys, we, we do this all the time in under the right, like, there's a lot of spin around today, you know, and politicians are expert in, in, in giving us spin. It's sort of information that's distorted. It's, it's designed to manipulate and to coerce, to confuse. It's one thing to snigger when reading a letter from a bank or reading a letter from a, a telco or listening to a politician. That's one thing. But who would dare snigger in response to one of God's promises? Who would dare do that? Well, one person did and we just read about her. It's, it's Sarah. She's 90 years of age as we pick her up in this reading, 90 years of age, 24 years earlier. She and her husband, Abraham, had a miraculous encounter with the living God. That was the time when God had said to them both, you are going to be Abraham, you're going to be the father of a great nation. Sarah, you're going to be instrumental in providing this. The number of people in this nation, this nation of Israel is going to be like the grains of sand on the seashore. It's going to be huge. It's going to make a huge impact on history. It did then. It has been since. It is today, the nation of Israel. So that was 24 years before and nothing's happened and now she's 90, okay? And here she is in Genesis 18 and she's, she's eavesdropping on a conversation between her husband and a guy who actually turns out to be one of these three strangers actually turns out to be the Lord himself, just an incredible manifestation of God. And verse 10, what does God say? "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son." And what is Sarah's response? It's the snigger. It's the... Right. It's in verse 12. Look at this. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I'm worn out, my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" And here's the thing I love. Sarah picks up on it and he says to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? What is her problem?" And Sarah is embarrassed that she says, "Oh, I did not laugh." And the Lord says, "If you did, you did laugh." I saw that. It's kind of like in school, you know, when somebody laughs when somebody would do something unspeakable in the class and we'd laugh and the teacher said, "You're laughing, son. No, I'm not." And that kind of thing, well, I go back to a bygone era when that sort of thing actually happened. And teachers were great in my day, you know, they'd sort of scream at you at the top of the voice. So they'd say something and scream at you, "What did I just say, son?" And like the chance of you not hearing what they just said was impossible. It's just a... It was part of the banter between teacher and student. Guys, look, this starts to... Like, here's a woman, I love Sarah. She's a woman about to embark on a very steep learning curve in her journey with God. She's about to learn some things, but she hasn't fully grasped before. Her faith journey is about to enter a brand new phase. From Sarah's journey with God, we're going to learn a number of things. She was about to learn a number of things. The first one is this, honesty is not the best policy with God. It is, in fact, the only policy with God. Not only... I mean, it is the only policy. But, understandably, she'd try to conceal her doubt. I mean, after all, she was a woman of God. She was Abraham's wife. She was known far and wide as a woman of great faith. How would it be if Word got out? Sarah's got some doubts. You know. She's actually had a... She gave a little sneaker. When God made a promise to her about that, Sarah, whom we all thought was had it all together, she's actually got a few doubts. She couldn't abide that sort of thinking of the thing that people would think that. So, she tries to hide it. But, guys, what's the outcome? Does God withdraw the promise? Does he rebuke his faithful servant and says, "Right, that's it. You laughed. Okay, I'm going to give this promise to somebody else. You're not worthy of my promise." No, no, no. He doesn't do anything like that. In fact, he restates the promise that he's given to Abraham and to Sarah. He says, "No, no, don't worry. I'm coming back. It's going to happen." None of this laughter. You're going to... You wait and see. It's almost like God's saying, "No, no, no. You got me wrong. I'm definitely coming back. It's going to happen." We serve... We serve, we worship. We're in relationship with an all-seeing, all-knowing God. Don't try to hide from God. Don't try to be dishonest with God. If you've got struggles, if things are happening in your life, don't try to put on some kind of false front with God. If there's one area of our lives, we can be totally honest with God. It's in this area of transparency. He wants us to just lay it all before him. He may want to shape us and do some very definite work of rebuilding and remolding, but he just loves caring for his children in that way. Here's the second thing. God's delays are not God's denials. Look, do I even have to unpack that here? I mean, would there be a person in this auditorium tonight who has not experienced that side of their faith journey where you're praying into something and you're praying into something and it doesn't seem to be happening and sometimes it's only when you look back and you see the way the various pieces have fallen into place, you realize that the timing for your request at the outset was not right. It was not ideal. But looking back, you can see how in some cases things did fall into place. I remember back in Adelaide when I knew deep in my heart that my time at my last church was coming to an end. I just had a sense, I'd been in the one church for over 15 years and within our movement I'd achieved a lot of my goals in the area of speaking. I'd spoken at all the conferences. I'd even had a decade or so on the corporate speaking circuit. Marion at its height, about this time I was thinking about this, was in the top five churches of our movement in the nation in terms of its community impact and size and so on. I started getting a feeling, you know, I think, God, I'd love to do some ministry in the United States. I've been there many times, I had a lot of contacts over there. It just seemed like a great opportunity, a fresh frontier, a whole new country. Our churches over there are very, very strong, many of them and I thought I would pursue some ministry opportunities. Well, I can't tell you, it's embarrassing to tell you what happened. I remember I wrote three initial letters off. This was sort of pre-email day, three letters, giving my CV, lots of recommendations. One letter I found out didn't even make it to its destination, didn't even make it. Second letter, I got a response which was one of those where sort of like it was dear and then the name was just a little bit below the dear and you sort of got the impression that this is how they handle all inquiries from overseas. So I wrote back and said, "Hi, thanks, you just dropped my response down a little bit, my standard response to..." Well, you know, so that was a bit disheartening and then I got a letter from a church in Colorado that said, "Oh, you might be wanting a ministry in America. Look, we're really desperate to get a new pastor." And I think that had, I got the letter in my file, so I think they had three ministers in five years and they said, "But we really are in strife and we need to..." I thought, "Yeah, I'm not sure about that." Three ministers in five years, that usually spells conflict and all sorts of political overtones. Come along, Stuart, the door was just blocked for me to go to America and I was a standard because I thought that God had been giving me all these contacts over there over many years for just a time as this to sort of springboard over there, get involved in a ministry. And in the next 12 months, unbeknownst to me, I didn't know he was thinking the minister of northside stepped down and that became available. And I got a phone call in the night, would I consider becoming the minister here? I'd had a lot of contact with this church over the years. Kind of new deep down a lot was very different to my other church in Adelaide. I kind of knew that this would represent for me a very different ministry setting and that's what I was looking for, something that was going to cause me at 50 years of age to totally reinvent myself. And well, I guess you could say the rest is history in that I responded to that call. The other thing that God dealt with is that I've been running away from a building program, as some of you know, that was the next step in my last church. We had to build to cope with the crowds and that scared the life out of me. And so I thought, "Well, it's time to go. I'll leave that to my successor." Well, you know, God's got a great sense of humour because I can't land it here and the building we've done here is infinitely bigger than anything we would have ever contemplated back in Marion. So, you know, you look back and you see, well, God has his ways and of course that doesn't mean to say that every prayer gets answered. I mean, in some cases, it's like the experience of Paul where he got the word from God. Look, you know, my grace is going to be sufficient for you. I'm not going to remove the problem. But you will grow. You will grow as a person because of the need for you to handle this issue that will continue to persist. It'll keep going on, but my grace will be sufficient for you. Well, this next point, guys, this is expressed kind of by a slogan, which I shared with the congregation earlier this year, or maybe even late last year. And look, it'd just be another quaint saying, one of those little sayings, you know, put on Facebook, you know, love those sayings in Facebook. I'm using a couple this week actually in radio talks, good stuff. I'll thank those of you who put them up later on. A lot of stuff I can't use, but these were a couple I could, use these ones. Now, this could be seen as just another little quaint saying, until you know who said it, it was said by a guy called Nick Bessujic. Who knows Nick Bessujic? You know, this is the guy, when I tell you who he is, you'll know, he's the guy dynamic Christian, motivational speaker, preacher, author, wonderful man, born without limbs. And when I say without limbs, I mean without limbs, no arms at all, no legs at all. What he does have, which enables him to do things like play golf and do all kinds of the crazy stuff. He has the appearance of a part of a foot, just a couple of toes. Okay, this is Nick Bessujic, who's seen Nick Bessujic on television? I don't know if you do or three, okay, no, quite a few, quite a few. Look, he's a legend. We should probably should have put a picture up here. It's pretty confronting. Seeing a picture of Nick Bessujic is pretty confronting his man in his thirties. And a dynamic Christian, but no amount of prayer, no amount of faith has been able to grow limbs for this man, but he came up with this saying, he said this, if you don't receive a miracle, become a miracle. Now guys, that sort of saying has impact. When you know the person who has said it, if you don't receive a miracle, then you become a miracle. And that's what Nick Bessujic is. And I would like to think that, in fact, I do believe that Sarah is a personification of this particular kind of quality and this particular aspiration. She is a living, breathing example of this in the scriptural record. I mean, I'm more inspired in one sense. Now, I don't want this to sound irreverent. I'm more inspired in one sense by what happened to her in the first 90 years of her life than I am by what happened to her at 90 when she was told she was going to be pregnant. I'm going to expect to have a baby. I'm more impressed with what happened to her in the first 90 years. Now don't get me wrong. What happened to her at 90 was phenomenal, unbelievable. I mean, she must be the only woman in history who paid for her pediatrician and gynecologist out of her old age pension. I mean, how many others have done that? She's probably only one. It makes her an absolute miracle. But look, you know, I'm thinking about all the years before, the shame, the stigma, the social ostracism, the utter despair of being childless was a big issue in those days. Today, it's heart-rending. It's heart-rending when couples, and it's a sensitive issue for couples in this congregation at any one time. It's heart-rending when couples who want children for whatever reason don't seem to be able to have them or have them when they'd like to. In the ancient world, it was an absolute source of shame. And in that era, which was sort of male domination, it was always the woman's fault, always the woman's fault, no other explanation. Terrible stigma was attached to what the Bible calls barrenness. And still today, of course, among religions that are still in the dark ages, they still believe that this is the case. But through all these years, Sarah's faith in God remains strong. She took the taunts, she took the criticism, she took the hurtful remark she never gave up on God. And then in her sixties, when God made the covenant promise to Abraham that she'd be part of creating a great nation. And all the nations of the world would be blessed, still nothing, nothing. But around the days you would have gone to all the specialists, would have read all the books on fertility, would have listened to the friends who gave their advice and their comments, some of which is helpful, some of which is not so helpful, might have gone to a Benny Hinn rally, something like that. But where do we find this most gracious, dignified lady at 90? Where do we find it? She's still journeying with God. She's still going about the daily routines of life. She's still trusting. She's still in the presence of God alongside her husband Abraham. She's still believing, she's still worshiping, she's still hanging out with the people of God. Now friends, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. Given the heartbreak she would have experienced over the years, that's a miracle. Here's the final point. How we respond to the Sarah moments of life will largely determine the level of stability and endurance in our journey with God, how we handle the Sarah moments. And these moments abound. You see, a Sarah moment is when we have to deal with our doubts. That's a Sarah moment. A Sarah moment is when you've got to cope with unanswered prayer. A Sarah moment is when you've got a situation of stress, maybe health-related, maybe vocationally related, maybe involved with relationships, and no amount of prayer seems to be altering the harsh reality you're facing. That's a Sarah moment. It might be financial. It might be marital. It can extend over weeks, months, years. It's a Sarah moment. A Sarah moment comes whenever we're faced with the same question that was posed to Sarah. And it comes in verse 14. Check it out. Is anything too hard for the Lord, this is the Lord speaking? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Sarah, you're going to have a baby. Yeah, right. Is anything too hard for the Lord? What's that sneaker right here? Now, guys, most solid Christians will answer, no, of course not. Nothing is too hard for you, Lord, as it relates to others. Nothing is too hard for you, Lord, for them, for him, for her. But what about us? What about my prayers? Your prayers? My dreams? Your dreams? My hopes? Your hope. Is anything too hard for the Lord? What will the mature faith say no? But those of us who answer in this way also, also, have to say no to another question. And this question is not born out of excitement and the answer to prayer as much as it's born out of pain and suffering and real despair in some cases. And here's the question. Does God take every too hard thing in our lives and automatically, irrefutably, miraculously solve it, rectify it, heal it, does he do that in every situation? And guys, the answer is going to be, no, he doesn't. For whatever reason, for whatever reason, he doesn't do that. Now, I put it to us tonight. That's the tension we have to handle in our Christian lives every day. I said, yeah, if you think of simple answers in the faith, this lady's story has got something for you. In my ministry, I'm dealing with this all the time. All the ministry team are. All our elders are. Anybody who's involved in caring for people, you're dealing with the reality that we all believe. Nothing is too hard for you, God, but we also have to deal with the fact that God doesn't always instantly, miraculously, irrefutably fix up everything, this is the way it is. That's the tension I live with, that's the tension you live with. For the first 90 years of her life, Sarah had to live in the shadow of the second question. Then at 90, she got the miracle she was praying for and everything changed. Now guys, we have a huge advantage over Sarah, we've been saying this in this morning series of superheroes, we've got a huge advantage over Sarah, you know what it is? Here it is. We are recipients of the love, the grace, the power, the strength of the resurrected Jesus whom she knew nothing about. Through the Holy Spirit, we, in this journey of trying to hold these two questions in tension, we don't have to just look at this rationally or in some kind of distant, objective way, we have the Holy Spirit, the power of the resurrected Christ, journeying with us to help us make sense out of these two extremes, and they are extreme. There's a stack of scriptures I could bring to bear on this, but we're run out of time. So here's something that I carry with me all the time. And guys, I've got to tell you, it helps me cope with this tension. It helps me look people in the eye who are suffering and not offer false hope, not offer a tried answer, not offer a couple of key verses, but offer a real gutsy, I'm journeying with you even though I don't know what the answer is. Here's the thing I want to share with you. When you can't trace the hand of God, trust the heart of God, okay? Our God does not want any of us to suffer needlessly. He journeys with us through suffering, we learn through suffering, we grow through suffering, but he's not a vindictive, let's get that guy kind of person. We are, that's how we think, but he doesn't think like that. So when you can't trace the hand of God, trust the heart of God, what does he think of you? What does he think of me? Well, he sent Jesus Christ to suffer and to die and to be raised to life, to be our Savior, to usher us into eternity, but like that's what he, he's already declared the value of a human soul, we've got no doubts about that. So that's his heart. And we won't know this side of heaven why things just don't fall into place as we would like. They didn't for Sarah for 90 years. And even then, that doesn't mean to say that after that time we're all going to, everything's going to be fine. For some people, for some issues, there is no answer. The challenge of the Christian life, and I see it in so many people in this congregation when you can't get a miracle, be a miracle. Why have I stayed with the Christian faithful these years? There are many reasons. One of them is, one of them is. I've had the privilege of journeying with men and women and young people who, on paper, should have said, "Hey God, if this is what you want to dish out to me, then I'm out of here. I'm sorry. I can't cope with this. It's over." And these are people who have not done that, they've stayed with the faith, they've praised God in all situations, they've learned the secret of Sam's share a couple of weeks ago knowing what it is to rejoice in all situations. I guess get inspired by those people. Because out in the world, they're the sort of things that bring people undone, people trash their lives, if they feel they've got a rough hand. But in the body of Christ, people rise above all kinds of things, and they're legends, they're giants. Most of them wouldn't say, "Burt of a goose," but they're just beautiful people. And they just journey on solidly. We happen in this congregation, I've met hundreds of them, thousands of them over the years. And the effect on me is, "I want to be like that." If my day ever comes from a major crisis, and compared to most people, I don't think I've really had a major crisis. I've had some rough times, but compared to some people, I don't think I've had a really mate, but I'll know where to go when my turn comes. I'll go to him, and he'll come to me through these people. And we'll talk, and I'll draw a tremendous inspiration from their example, as I have done already, because I think they're bracing me for what's to come. Guys, that's the faith, that's the industrial strength faith. It's not simple answers to complex questions. It's gutsy working an out day by day with a resurrected power of Christ living and surging within us. That's the faith. Do you know Jesus Christ tonight? Can you relate to any of this? Is this the kind of life you want? If you do, then I lovingly invite you to receive Jesus Christ. That's a simple matter of just saying, "Jesus, come into my life." No bells and whistles, no hallelujah chorus, no shaft of light from the sky. Just a simple, "Yeah, Jesus Christ, I want to follow you. I want to get serious about what it means to be a disciple. I want to get serious about what these guys are talking about, journeying with you through the good times, through the bad times, through the tough times. I want to know what that's about. I simply say, "Yes, come into my life and he'll meet you more than halfway."