Laughing with God can be a good activity. The Bible encourages us to clap our hands, dance with delight, and shout with joy. It is good the sing, feast, and have merry hearts. In Psalm 126:2, God’s people are characterized as those whose mouths are filled with laughter while their tongues shout with joy. Yes, laughing with God, this is an honorable trait.
However, laughing at God, that is an entirely different matter. In Genesis 17:17, Abraham disbelieved and laughed when God promised him a son through Sarah. In Genesis 18:12, Sarah followed the lead of her husband. She too disbelieved and laughed.
Truthfully, I think we would have been tempted to laugh as well. Even today, we are tempted to disbelieve God is …
- Ordering and overseeing all things for his glorious plan and our ultimate good.
- Intentionally wise in allowing us to physically deteriorate and suffer.
- Watching over us with compassionate love while we hurt and cry.
- Lovingly seeking our best interests through giving us his counter-cultural moral code.
- Able to work repentance in our hardened spouse, wandering children, or disinterested neighbor.
- Powerful enough to give us victory over a particular sin.
- Actively sovereign in establishing all our governmental authorities.
- Accomplishing something fantastic through our national slide into insanity.
- Supernaturally responsive to our prayers.
- Mercifully casting our sins into the Sea of Forgetfulness and remembering them no more.
- Preparing a paradisaical future for us that makes any earthly sacrifice and suffering worth it.
Yes, we are all tempted to disbelieve like Eve, Adam, Abraham, Sarah, the Ten Spies, Israel, Zechariah, and all Twelve Disciples. We are tempted to disbelieve, and if we think no one is watching, we are even tempted to laugh.
However, how about some fantastic news? God keeps his promises regardless of our disbelief, our laughter, and our taking matters into our own hands.
The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
Genesis 21:1-7
Therefore friends, let’s repent of our laughing at God. Instead, let’s look forward to having a great laugh with him — today and tomorrow — when he shows up and keeps all his ridiculous promises
Unfathomable Grace 