Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight, is study #8 of Genesis, chapter 21.  We are continuing to read Genesis 21:2-6:

For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

We are going to move on to look at the birth of Isaac in a different way.  We have been looking at it in a deeper spiritual way, and we are going to continue to look at it from the standpoint of a different spiritual picture.  God has infused a great amount of spiritual truth in the historical account of the family of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac or even Hagar and Ishmael.  All of them can be types and figures of various things.  We have seen that Isaac is a type of Christ becoming the Son through His death and resurrection at the foundation of the world.

Now we will look at it from another angle.  First, the name “Isaac” is very significant.  God selected the name.  The name “Isaac” is a name that comes from the word “laugh.”  It says in Genesis 18:11-15:

Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? And JEHOVAH said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is any thing too hard for JEHOVAH? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.

Again, the word “laugh” is the word from which Isaac’s name is derived.  It has three of the four same Hebrew letters, but it is basically the “Yod,” the little Hebrew letter that is placed in front of the word “laugh,” to make the word “Isaac.”  When Isaac was born, it says in Genesis 21:3-5:

And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

But then notice what Sarah is quoted as saying, in Genesis 21:6:

And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

It is pointing to the only begotten son that was given to Sarah who is called the “freewoman” in Galatians 4, as Isaac is a picture of those born of the grace of God.  God had made her to laugh and all that hear will laugh with her.  In the Bible, the word “hear” has a definite connotation: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  The elect were saved through the hearing of the Word of God.  God had selected them to receive salvation and applied it to each individual through His Word in the day of salvation.  They would “hear” and “laugh,” just as Sarah was made to laugh.

Sarah was made to laugh because of a miraculous birth that was impossible, except that God intervened and brought it to pass.  Remember, it referred to the deadness of Sarah’s womb.  And not only was Sarah’s womb dead, but God says of her husband Abraham, in Romans 4:18-19:

Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: 

He considered his own body now “dead,” so we can see why Sarah was laughing.  From her dead womb and through her “dead” husband has come a son.  She laughed and all that hear will laugh with her.  God’s elect will laugh with her because the son, in the first instance, is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ rising from the dead and coming forth to life.  As a result, Sarah laughed, as well as all God’s elect.

By the way, remember what the Bible says about God’s elect and a time that will come when we will laugh.  It says 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.

As it said in Genesis 21, “all that hear shall laugh with me.”  God reaffirms in the book of Luke that those that weep now shall laugh.  When would we laugh?  It is when God has triumphed and put down all His enemies.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  When God raises His people and they “rise from the dead” and are equipped with new resurrected bodies and placed in the new heaven and new earth where they will have everlasting life,  all God’s people will laugh.

That is one tie-in to “laughing,” but there is another connection in Luke, chapter 8 where Christ raised a young girl from the dead.  It says in Luke 8:49-56:

While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master. But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole. And when he came into the house, he suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the maiden. And all wept, and bewailed her: but he said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise. And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and he commanded to give her meat. And her parents were astonished: but he charged them that they should tell no man what was done.

You see, it is the reaction of mankind to laugh.  It was even Sarah’s reaction and Abraham also laughed when God said that he would bring forth life from death.  And according to the language of the Bible, Isaac came from a dead womb and from a “dead” husband and, therefore, he was coming from death to life.  When God says He will do that kind of thing, the reaction of mankind is to laugh. 

So, Sarah saw the faithfulness of God and the power of God as she held her newborn baby in her arms.  She knws this baby came forth from her womb, but she was a 90-year-old woman.  She was past childbearing age, but here was her beautiful son that was promised to Abraham to be the seed (representing Christ).  And there he was, the fulfillment of the promise, so God made her to laugh and all that hear to laugh with her.  God will fulfill His salvation program and bring to pass everything He has spoken.  He will fulfill every declaration.  And He will soon end all things for this world and complete the salvation of the bodies of all those that are counted for the seed in Christ as He equips us with new resurrected bodies and place His elect in the new heaven and new earth. 

In this life, you and I are aware of our thoughts, our lives, our surroundings, and when we are in the new heaven and new earth in eternity future, we will have a sense or an awareness of our surroundings that will confirm our existence, and in our sensory perception we will experience life in a perfect place, in a perfect body, and in the presence of the Perfect One, the Lord God Almighty.  We will “take all this in” in an incredible, glorious way and we will know, and we will “laugh.”  God will make us to laugh – we who have wept, and we who have been troubled all along that narrow way that leads to heaven.  It has been full of affliction and tribulation.  It has been full of persecution.  We have been cast down in our souls and, yet, God has carried us and brought us through to the final entrance as we leave this life and enter into eternity.  We will know it.  And we will laugh with Him.  And we will laugh with Sarah and all that hear will laugh with her.  What a tremendous future we have.  What a tremendous expectation the people of God can have.

Let me just lay out where we are headed, as we continue to look at these verses regarding Sarah and Isaac, and the circumcision of Isaac on the eighth day, plus the weaning of Isaac.  All these things are full of spiritual meaning.  We will be going to Galatians 4, once again.  We will be looking at Isaiah 54, as we look at Sarah as a picture of a desolate woman who brings forth “many children,” more so than the married wife.  Then we will look at Isaac’s weaning and we will see how it relates to God hiding truth in the Bible until the time of the end.  As it says in the book of Hebrews, there is a necessity to come off the mother’s milk (to be weaned) and to move on to “strong meat.” 

It is just amazing how God has written the Bible.  I know you may be thinking, “We have done eight studies and we are still in the first few verses.”  Our minds are not capable of it, but I am sure there is enough material to do 800 or 8,000 studies from these verses, if we had the mind of God or if Christ was the teacher.  He could “plumb the depths” that are boundless.  We could just go deeper and deeper and deeper into the Word of God.  But we are not able to do that entirely, but we can follow the Lord’s command and direction to dig for the buried treasure of “silver and gold.”  We are trying our best to dig into the Bible and not just find what is on the surface, but we must admit that with our limited ability, we can only go so far in our digging.

We have come to the end of tonight’s Bible study, but please join us next time as we continue in Genesis 21.