Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible Part in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is Part #20 of Genesis, chapter 17 and we are going to read Genesis 17:17:

Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

In our last couple of studies, we have been looking at the Hebrew word translated as “laughed” in this verse and we have also been looking at a related word that is used in the Old Testament. We have seen that these two words are interchangeable.

We have also learned that God identifies the day of salvation as a time of weeping for His people, as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:4 that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh.” The “time to weep” relates to the time period in which God was saving people throughout the church age and in the last Part of the Great Tribulation, until He completed His salvation program on May 21, 2011 at the end of the Great Tribulation. Then began the final judgment period when Judgment Day came upon all the inhabitants of the earth. Spiritually, the season then changed from “weeping” to “laughing” for God’s people. In the Day of Judgment, God laughed at the calamity of the wicked, according to Proverbs, chapter 1. It is also the time period in which the elect people of God are laughing with Him. Remember, Jesus spoke to His people in the Beatitudes in Luke 6:21:

Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

The season changed from a time of salvation to the time of the wrath of God in the Day of Judgment and so, too, the season changed from weeping to laughing.

I have said this several times before, but I will say it one more time: God’s elect people (myself and all God’s elect) take no delight in the death of the wicked. The Bible tells us that God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked and Judgment Day is that time when the wicked are being killed, spiritually. To be more correct, they have already been “killed” when God shut the door to heaven – He spiritually killed every unsaved person in the world. So, even though the Bible uses the word “laugh,” it is important to understand that it does not mean that God or His people take any perverse delight in the fact that the unsaved people are under the wrath of God. God forbid it. We would never want such a thing and we sorrow over that fact, but the type or figure is there in the Bible and God uses this figure in Psalm 126:5:

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Here are the two seasons. The sowing identifies with sharing the Gospel seed when the Word of God would fall upon the hearts of men. The reaping identifies with the time when the harvest is ripe and ready to “pluck up” and that is the time of Judgment Day. Sowing was done in tears and reaping was done in joy, as it goes on to say in Psalm 126:6:

He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

These are two “polar opposites.” The weeping identifies with bringing the precious seed of the Gospel and the rejoicing identifies with bringing in the fruits of the harvest and Judgment Day is the time of harvest because God had saved all His people. This is the figure He uses, so in this time of harvest after God has completed His salvation program and saved the last of the elect, there is no one else to be saved out there and, therefore, we are not going forth with the Word of God to evangelize the world and encourage people to cry for mercy and beseech the Lord for salvation. What we do proclaim is that the door of heaven is shut and God has saved everyone He intended to save, but if you were outside the corporate church during the time of the Latter Rain in the last Part of the Great Tribulation it is possible that God did save you. We do not know, but that is the only hope for the person that was not within the churches. Even though it is a small hope, we are thankful to God for any hope at this time, so we can still pray for our children, friends, neighbors and strangers that the Lord may have had mercy upon them.

But, again, this time period identifies with God’s people “laughing.” If you remember, there were two Hebrew words. The word translated as “laughed” in Genesis 17:17 was Strong’s #6711. But there is a synonymous word, Strong’s #7832 and the name “Isaac” is, for the most Part, derived from Strong’s #6711, except for four instances in which the name “Isaac” is derived from Strong’s #7832 and the latter is the word used in Ecclesiastes 3:4 where it said, “a time to weep, and a time to laugh,” and that word is also found in Proverbs 31 in the passage where God speaks of a “virtuous woman.” It says in Proverbs 31:10-11:

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.

The virtuous woman is a picture of God’s elect, the bride of Christ. And who would be her husband? It would be the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the discussion of this virtuous woman, it says in Proverbs 31:23-25:

Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.

The word “rejoice” is Strong’s #7832, which is translated as “laugh” or “laughed” in several places, so we could read this verse to say that this virtuous woman, the elect, “shall laugh in time to come.” There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, as Jesus said in Luke 26:21:

Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

Jesus said, “for ye shall laugh,” and He was referring to a future time and that future time began when God ended His salvation program and began His judgment program. The judgment program is a time identified with God’s people laughing, so the “virtuous woman” or the elect “shall rejoice in time to come.” It would have been better translated as “she shall laugh in the day to come.” We must ask the question: what day would this be? The answer is that it is Judgment Day. God’s people laugh and God laughs. God laughs at the calamity of the wicked, but He does not take pleasure in this, but He is using a figure that it is His turn to laugh because when He sent forth His Gospel in the day of salvation, the wicked laughed and mocked. God is “turning the tables” and because the wicked dismissed their need of salvation and made light of the glorious salvation that God wrought through the Lord Jesus Christ, God is, as it were, laughing in the Day of Judgment.

The wicked had more important things to occupy their time: “I want to watch the football game. I want to head down to the bar and enjoy myself.” We know all the things that the people of the world are busy doing and it is all vanity and emptiness. None of it is of any real importance when compared to our relationship to God and the condition of our souls, but man dismissed the greater need and focused on the minor things of this vain life. So, in the Day of Judgment, God switches it around and now God will dismiss their cries. Remember what happened in Matthew 7 when many “in that day” come to the door and knock, saying, “Lord! Lord! Open the door to us!” Jesus dismissed them: “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

In Revelation 9, where it refers to Judgment Day, it says in Revelation 9:6:

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

The “death” they are seeking is “death in Christ” or identification with the death of Christ on their behalf. It cannot be physical death because mankind is very able to find physical death. People seek death daily through their sins because the wages of sin is death. The solution to this verse is spiritual death in Christ. They will seek identification with the death of the Lord Jesus and they will not be able to find it. They will desire to “die in Christ” in salvation, but that “death shall feel from them.” God will dismiss their cries. He will dismiss their pleas and in that dismissal, it is as though God is mocking man or “making sport” of them and laughing.

That is the way our Hebrew words were translated. Judgment Day is a sorrowful day for God’s people as we are alive and remain on the earth to go through it and we “laugh” in a figure that identifies with this specific time and season. That is all it is.

Let us look at one more verse in Revelation 18. It says in Revelation 18:11:

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

This is an example of that “reversal” we were discussing. Mankind laughed during the day of salvation when they should have been weeping. In the book of James, God points this out in James 4:8-9:

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

When you hear the warning, take salvation seriously. Humble yourself. Stop the Party and stop eating, drinking and making merry. Take this matter seriously. Go to God and let your laughter be turned to mourning, but the non-elect individual did not like that idea and refused to do it. Therefore, in the Day of Judgment, this final period of time, the non-elect are now weeping; they had their time of laughing when they should not have laughed. So, now is their time of weeping. Therefore, we find in Revelation 18 a discussion of the destruction of Babylon, a figure of this world, and we find that the merchants are “weeping.” They are weeping because the judgment has come. It says in Revelation 18:19:

And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

Again, they are weeping and they are made desolate because there is no longer salvation. They do not have to be consciously aware of it, but this is how God is picturing this truth. Then after it says the people of the world are weeping, it says in Revelation 19:20:

Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.

The elect are to rejoice. Remember the “virtuous woman” that would rejoice in the day to come. Here, the elect are referred to as “holy apostles and prophets,” a spiritual designation, and we are to rejoice because “God hath avenged you on her.” It is the cry of those “under the altar” or the cry of the saints of God in Revelation 6:9-10:

…I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

Now that time of judgment has come. Babylon fell at the end of the Great Tribulation period on May 21, 2011 and God tells His people to rejoice because He has avenged us. We must be very careful because we never want to point a finger at any individual and rejoice that God has shut the door and ended salvation to punish the wicked of the earth. No – may it not be. But this is the language of the Bible because the season has changed from “weeping” to “laughing” and “rejoicing” as we come with the sheaves and bring in the harvest. And we can rejoice in that, even though this is a very grievous time period. We may not have a big smile on our faces, but through the understanding that God has completed His salvation program, we should rejoice.

Is there anything more overlooked and ignored by so many, even the people of God? We do not spend sufficient time on the fact that God had a salvation program to save certain individuals throughout history and, finally, in our day on that date of May 21, 2011 He did save the last individual that was to be saved. He saved the last name found in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The last sheep was brought to the Shepherd. There are no more lost sheep out in the world. They have all been found and that is why our task is to feed the sheep, not to find them. But God has saved everyone He had obligated Himself to save. He had sworn an oath to save them all and they have all been saved and just relatively recently! Is that not a cause to rejoice for the people of God? God has done what He said He would do and, of course, this is a wonderful cause of rejoicing because if God completed that He will also complete everything else. The promised seed has been found and delivered and now it is just a matter of fulfilling the promise of the new heaven and new earth and it is close at hand. So, we have wonderful cause for joy in this Day of Judgment.

We will stop here. Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible Part in the book of Genesis, we will continue to verse 18 where Abraham cried unto God, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” God answered him and said, “And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly.” What an amazing statement regarding Ismael. We might have expected this to have been directed at Isaac. In our next Bible study, we will look at that as we continue in Genesis, chapter 17.