The Miraculous Births of the Bible: Isaac

Historically, the Christian church has set aside the four weeks before December 25 to focus on humanity’s deep longings, our need for Jesus to come into this world—including our longing for his second Advent (his return). So, originally the celebration of Christmas did not begin until Christmas Day itself. December 25 kicked off a 12-day celebration of gift giving. (If you remember the song, “The 12 Days of Christmas”, the first day is Christmas Day!)

Unfortunately, in a consumer-driven society, Advent and its themes don’t exactly inspire people to break out the credit card and gleefully swipe away. People spend more when they are celebrating than they do when they are focusing on their longing for Jesus to return. So, in our consumer-driven economy, we now start the Christmas celebration season on Black Friday and end on Christmas Day. No real Advent waiting, longing, or reflecting—mostly shopping, parties, and sugar.

But that is not what this season is for the church. Or at least not what it should be. Advent should be a season of longing, that as we are waiting and longing to celebrate Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ first coming, we remind ourselves that we are waiting now—waiting for his second coming.

And as we wait, we remember that the whole Bible points to Jesus. The events of the Old Testament are going somewhere, because the world then was waiting, too—waiting for redemption, waiting for God to come incarnate, waiting for God to make all things right and new. Then they waited for Jesus to come; now we still wait, waiting for Jesus to come back, to finish making all things right and new.

And in the world in which we wait, this isn’t always easy. The question for this Advent season is this: “How do we wait?” Do we wait with excitement? Joy? Longing? Expectation? Fear? Sadness? Grief? Some mix of all of those and more?

The Bible records a number of miraculous births. Advent reminds us that they all point to Jesus. Because waiting for a baby is a long thing, a wait with lots of worry, apprehension, fear, joy. And that wait is supposed to point us to something bigger—just like the waits of Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah, Elizabeth—those waits and even their eventual sons only point to something bigger, to Mary and her son, Jesus himself.

Yet as we think about Advent and miraculous births, we need to acknowledge something right up front. In the world we live in, not every wait for a baby comes true. We live in a world horribly fallen, horribly marred by sin, one that has waits that end in heartache, waits that end in devastation, waits that do not have such happy endings. Many of us have struggled with infertility and do not have the type of miraculous stories that we see in the Old Testament texts. Many have had pregnancies that have been lost. Many have never been able to conceive. Many have had struggles and grief with not just childbearing but with our children.

We do not take that lightly. We dare not take that lightly. Quite the opposite—these are us waiting—with grief and pain, waiting for God, himself to come and make all things new. Because we live in a world that is not as it ought to be, one that needs Jesus to come back and restore what is broken, to fix what is twisted, to make all things new.

We see all those dynamics in Genesis 18:1–15, when God promises the birth of Isaac:

And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”

The economist Paul Samuelson published possibly the most successful economics textbook ever written. Many readers of a certain generation probably once had it on our bookshelf, using it in a college class. As Arthur Brooks reported in the Atlantic:

As the years went by and he updated the book, he changed his estimate of the inflation level that was tolerable for the health of the macroeconomy: First, he said 5 percent was acceptable; then, in later editions, 3 percent and 2 percent, prompting the Associated Press to run an article titled ‘Author Should Make Up His Mind.’ In a television interview after Samuelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970, he gave his answer to the charge: “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

Truth be told, we rarely do. Instead, we keep our biases. Through a complex set of cognitive and other biases, we resist changing our understanding of a situation. We indulge anchoring bias, confirmation bias, the illusion of validity, and many other things. Instead of changing when things change, we assume things cannot change.

Here’s the point: by the time of Genesis 18, Abraham and Sarah have normalized their pain. So much so that they cannot—or maybe would not— believe God would ever change it. God tells them he is going to do something impossible. And they laugh at him. Not just Sarah, who laughs in this passage, but Abraham, only in the preceding chapter of Genesis. And here is what we see in Genesis 18 about Advent. Genesis 18:1–15 tells us that God is gracious when we do not believe.

Abraham and Sarah start not with laughter but with tears. They have accepted barrenness as normal. They have been waiting a long time with a lot of pain.

Abraham was previously named Abram. God changed his name in chapter 17. But both names have been names of pain for him. Abram means “exalted father,” and Abraham means “father of many.” Yet he and Sarah had been childless, not just through their twenties, not just through their thirties, not even through their forties, but now long past the end of it all. They had no children and now, at their age, they would have no children. And yet, Abraham’s name—every time Sarah spoke to him, every time anyone spoke to him, it was a stab in the gut to both of them, a reminder that things had not become what they were supposed to be.

This has been the long narrative arc of Abraham and Sarah’s life at this point in the book of Genesis. It was back in Genesis 15 that God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars of the sky and the sand by the seashore, and Abraham—Abram at that point—believed. But then the years wore by. By chapter 16, Abram and Sarah tried to do it their way, the way that it was done in their world, being pragmatic about their childlessness. Then in chapter 17 God had renewed the promise, changed Abram’s name —and, we should add —Abram had laughed then, just as Sarah laughs in chapter 18.

Their story had been a story of decades of tears.

Some know this pain. Others can sympathize, but do not fully know it. A friend, Becca Hermes, wrote this in a piece she authored some years back at TWI, and I would encourage you to read the entire piece there:

My leg bounced nervously as we sat in the waiting room at the fertility clinic for the first time. I gripped my husband’s hand harder, hoping for strength and comfort from his grasp. What would they find? Should my husband come back to the room with me? What would we have to do to be able to get pregnant? I quaked inside at the thought of the physical vulnerability I knew I would experience in the exam room. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. This is not the way a baby is supposed to be made.

The effects of infertility are multitudinous. Physical, emotional, social, spiritual, marital. It can easily consume every thought, every decision, every relationship. If you pursue treatment, it invades your calendar, your bank account, your bedroom, and your body. And yet it often remains a hidden struggle, concealed by the very nature of the topic….

But infertility is not sin. Neither is it uncommon. The Mayo Clinic reports that about 10-15% of couples are infertile,…

Nor is infertility just a woman’s problem. One third of infertility problems are caused by the woman’s body, one third caused by the man’s, and a third by both or for unknown reasons….

Each couple who walked the path of infertility had their own story and reason why they made the choices they made, and each reminds me that no two infertility stories are the same. But one aspect is similar for all: it is painful. It is one thing to decide not to have children; it is another thing entirely when you are unable….

I treasure the permission God gives us to talk with him. I had many arguments with God as well, conversations that were filled with grief, anger and accusation, disappointment, and hopelessness. …. “God, don’t you care about us? We serve you! We have given our lives to you and for you!” “God, we aren’t Abraham and Sarah. We have no promises of becoming a great nation or of you blessing the whole world through us. We aren’t the first forefathers of a covenant people who would eventually birth Jesus. I have no reason to hope that you would give us biological children. I get it; we just aren’t that important.”

They have waited and they have hurt, and Becca did not write this piece out of a story that ended with her ever becoming pregnant.  Hers is a story of meeting God in the pain, not of a magical ending.

If we do not struggle with infertility, there is something analogous. As Becca said, every story is unique. And we do not want to get into what is often called a “pain Olympics” trying to figure out who gets the gold medal. It all hurts. If not fertility, it may be cancer, or loss. Poverty. Abuse. Anxiety. Depression. Unemployment.

We live in a world of tears. And yet it is therefore incredibly easy to normalize our pain. How can we possibly see that God would fix this world? What if I told you that God promises that the tears will one day stop? It is hard to believe, at least if we have suffered deeply in life. Some hurts will never go away. They are, humanly speaking, a permanent hole in our hearts.

So, then, consider the laughter. Because laughter in Genesis 18 is unbelief. Not rebellious unbelief. Not defiant unbelief. Call it guarded unbelief. Sarah wants to believe this. But she cannot. The idea is ridiculous. The human body just does not work that way. What God promises here is impossible. Abraham is 99 years old, and Sarah is 89, and verse 12 says it with noticeable understatement, “The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.” Sarah is this mix of faith and unbelief. And so are we.

The reader does not know when Abraham realizes he is speaking with God. In these first verses, what Abraham says and does indicate general Ancient Near East hospitality. The way he treats these visitors is the way he would treat anyone coming by, though he is certainly extraordinarily generous in what he does for them. This is overgenerous not because Abraham initially realizes who these visitors are, but because he is now a rich, powerful man showing gracious hospitality to visitors who have travelled by.

But once the conversation begins, it quickly becomes clear that this is the angel of the Lord, speaking for God. In verse 10 he makes it clear that he controls even Sarah’s conception. And Sarah laughs to herself. Sounds good, God, but a little late and a lot naïve. Let me suggest that this is not a defiant laughter, but neither is it full-throated belief. She clearly wanted to believe, but it was hard to do so. Because, see verse 11, biology is remarkably unforgiving. So, we do not know her tone, honestly. Is it cynical? Maybe. But maybe more likely, this is just Sarah shaking her head.

And, remember again, this is not only Sarah’s reaction. If you flip back to the previous chapter and look at verses 15–21, Abraham has had the exact same reaction as Sarah. God promised Isaac to him, and Abraham laughed. Because it was absurd to think that God would fix even this, that he would take away those tears.

So let me ask. Where do we laugh? Where would we like to believe this world would be different, changed, but we’re just too much of a realist to buy it? Sure, it would be nice. But a little too late and a lot too naïve. A world full of abuse and addiction, a life that we cannot escape. How do we not laugh if God says it could be different? A world torn apart by wars and insurrections, by crimes of peoples against peoples. A world where food becomes a weapon and nations use every sort of violence against each other. A world where families are, instead of being a place of safety and peace, a place of danger and anger. How could we not laugh if God says it could be different?

We would like to believe what God says, but it seems like he is just selling something. We laugh, just like Abraham and Sarah did, because we have also normalized our pain. How do you not, if you want to even make it through in this world we live in?

But here is God’s Advent promise. The tears will one day stop. Not that you will necessarily have a baby, or get married, or find a job or reconcile with that family member. I cannot and will not promise you things God hasn’t promised, and God said this to Abraham and Sarah, not to you and me. But God does promise us that the tears will someday stop. Isaiah chapter 65:

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. …. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.” (Isaiah 65:17–25)

Now what the apostle John sees of that in the book of Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:1–5)

Are we not tempted to laugh when reading this, just like Abraham and Sarah? Yes, I would love to believe that, but I just cannot. Because I live in a world—and so do you—where the tears are normal. It is almost impossible to believe that a world without them could be.

So, God says this, but we shake our heads and laugh. And yet God is gracious when we do not believe.

God knows that Sarah laughed. Why was she afraid? Well, the asking of the question raises the possibility that the angel has taken offense. Sarah may have feared she would lose the blessing—even though she could only somewhat even believe it was there to be had. Or possibly Sarah even feared she would be judged. After all, in her world—remember, a world that was thoroughly and completely theistic—most ancient near eastern deities seemed to have a fairly itchy trigger finger.

Sarah is afraid—of losing the blessing, maybe being judged—because her faith is small. And the laughter and fear show that she does not really know how gracious God is. And, I dare offer, neither do we.

This passage all drives towards a climactic verse 14, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

The graciousness is that Abraham and Sarah get to laugh. Now not the laughter of unbelief or incomplete belief, but the laughter of a dream fulfilled, one they could not imagine would have come to pass, the laughter that, in Genesis 21, Isaac was miraculously born.

What Abraham and Sarah both needed to see was that God could turn tears into laughter, and that even when they did not believe it, he would do it. They needed a bigger view of God—that he could do more than they could ever imagine—and a deeper view of God—that they need not fear losing his favor and blessing as they struggled with unbelief. They needed to see God—his power and his grace.

What do we moderns need to see? What is your view of God? Who do you think he is? Do you think God is out there, waiting to get you when you mess up? Do you think he is just looking for a chance to take away your blessing? Here’s who God is: he is someone who has promised he is going to do the impossible. As John Walton says, that is “not a promise to claim but an attribute to embrace.”

God will do the impossible.

God promised Abraham and Sarah that a son would be born. That same God promised the same to Israel—that there would be a son born, one who would make Isaiah’s vision come true, one who would make all things new and all things right and all things good. And Israel would wait not 90 years, but hundreds and hundreds of years for that promised son of God, that Messiah. Would they not laugh with the same disbelief through the centuries? After hundreds of years of pain and disappointment and suffering and tears, would Israel not laugh at God’s promise? Many gave up and laughed in full unbelief.

Here is the message of Advent: a son was born. Yes, Isaac was born, but so also was Jesus, a greater Isaac. Isaac was a miraculous baby, born to impossibly elderly parents. But one day, centuries later, a more miraculous baby would be born: Jesus, born of a virgin. Mary was told by the angel, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:31–33)

And Mary did not laugh, but she had the same question—how will this be, since I am a virgin? Mary said, in essence, the same thing but without the laughter of unbelief, “It does not work that way.” And yet, it did. The hope of all the ages, the one to whom all our longings point, was born, more a miracle than even Isaac: Jesus Christ, Lord of all.

And that leaves one more miracle to discuss in Advent. Jesus offers you and me that miracle, the miracle that we can also be reborn. In the gospel of John, chapter 3, a Pharisee comes to Jesus. He seems to want to believe, but he’s scared enough of the societal and peer pressure around him that he only comes at night.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:1–17)

Sit in the weight of this truth this Advent. Where are you laughing or crying? How does this impact your view of God? Do you see that God is not so disturbed by your doubt as to not fulfill his promise?

Sit in the weight of this truth. Consider our longings, our tears, and how they point us to the same thing: that these miraculous births of the Bible only point out the world’s waiting for a more miraculous birth, that of our savior Jesus Christ. And seeing that he was born, consider what that means for both our tears and our joy.