Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

July 22, 2007

All Things are Possible

Genesis 18: 9-15

My in-laws love a good family story, and they will wear some of them out, particularly if someone in the family is embarrassed enough by it. One of the favorite stories that gets told almost every time we are together relates to Cherry’s mother and father who are both deceased. It was a time when the family had one car. It was early in the 60’s and Jim would drive Dot to work and drop her off, go to work, and then pick her up on the way home. One evening as she was waiting in the lobby of the building where she worked, it was raining. It was getting dark, and the car pulled up to the curb so she did like most of and covered her head. Head down, she runs out to the car, opens the door, jumps in, shakes the water off of whatever she is covering her head with, looks, and it’s not Jim. It is a man who is just staring at her. So they stared at each other for just a moment, and then she just jumped back out of the car and ran back into the office. That story gets told at almost every family vacation and at almost every Christmas.

One year, someone was telling it—not Dot—and I thought, “Can you imagine that there is a family somewhere where the man who was driving that car has gathered for Christmas and the kids are saying, “Dad, tell us about that time you were stopped at the traffic light and that lady jumped in your car.”

“Well, it was raining and I stopped at the light. The next thing I knew this woman with red hair jumped in my car.”

And really the story would not be completed unless you heard both sides of it, unless you heard both people tell it. I think that is a little bit like the story of Abraham and Sarah and God on the other side.

It is a long story and all we can do is just look at a little slice of it. But if you could imagine Sarah telling the story, she says, “Like many couples, all we ever really wanted was a child. And, forgive me, but in our culture, everything is inherited through the son. The family line goes through the son. What we really wanted was a son. We prayed for a son all the time. Then Abraham gets it in his mind that he is to worship God. So we follow God all over the Mid-East, and we are both already so old and any prospect of having a child seems just impossible. So we follow God, we try to help God in this process and God keeps promising my husband, ‘You’re going to have a son.’ One night he even took him outside from the tent and said, ‘Look up at the sky. One day your descendants will outnumber the stars in the sky.’ Look at me, I was already old. I was so old and it seemed like such a futile dream.

“Then one day, angels, God—I don’t know who was in the tent—strangers stopped by and we entertained them and they said, ‘When we come back this time next year, your wife, Sarah, will have a child.’ I couldn’t help but to laugh. I didn’t know they could overhear me. I didn’t know they could overhear me, but it was comical. Do you realize how old I was when they said that?

“And God said, ‘I heard you laugh. Name that boy Laughter because you laughed when you heard the promise and didn’t believe that I could do this thing.”

That would be Abraham and Sarah’s side of the story. Now imagine God’s side of the story.

“I needed a people, I needed a group of people, a tribe, a clan, a nation, and I needed a people who would be my witness in the world who would tell other people about what I really want from their hearts. I needed a group of people who would worship me and show other people how to worship me.

“And there is Abraham and Sarah. I spoke to Abraham, and when it was impossible for him to believe, he was still faithful. He was faithful and he followed. Sometimes he didn’t get it right the first time, but he followed the things that I said. He did what I asked. When it was very late, very late, when it was late enough that no one could claim anything human about it, when it was clear that the only reason it happened was because of my hand in it, I gave them a son and they called him Laughter, and through him came this great clan, tribe, nation, people, my children whom have given witness to me in the world.”

You realize you can hear it from the parents’ side or you can hear it from God’s side, but when the two get together, you have this complete picture of what really took place.

As we have progressed through the summer, I am preaching a sermon series on Prayers That God Says “Yes” to and Promises That God Always Keeps. Today’s sermon is All Things Are Possible based upon this story of Abraham and Sarah. Does this mean that people advanced in age, long past child-bearing years can pray and anybody will get a child? No, but I want to tell you that all things are possible. All things are possible when we pray. If you truly, truly, genuinely believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, what then can God not do? If God can raise Christ from the dead and do the undoing of death, what then can God not do? I will have to confess though that it is a mystery. It is a mystery why God answers some prayers and not others.

In a sermon I preached a couple of weeks ago that I have been told is now called the “Cadillac sermon,” I preached about two people that I have known in my lifetime who said that they prayed for Cadillacs and got them, and I have to tell you that I don’t know why those people could say that and other people who have prayed for things that seemed much more serious and much more earnest haven’t gotten what they have prayed for. It is a mystery. The bride prays for sunshine because the wedding is outside and the farmer prays for rain because the crops are dying. How does God answer that prayer?

Have you seen the movie Bruce Almighty where Jim Cary becomes God for a period of time and he has to answer the prayers? Everybody is praying to win the lottery so he finally just says, “OK everybody’s answer is yes.” Everybody wins about 2 cents because they have to divide it up among all the winners and nobody is happy, and it’s a mess. Can you imagine what life would be like if every prayer we ever prayed was answered yes? Can you imagine what a mess it would make in our own lives if we thought, “All I’ve really got to do is become a Christian. I become a Christian and God has to do anything I ask.” We become God in that case. We just tell God what we want God to do. It is a mystery; I cannot explain it, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not possible.

What I find in the story of Abraham and Sarah is this. When our desires coincide with God’s purpose, the answers are the clearest and the possibilities are the greatest.

God doesn’t do miracles just to kind of wow everybody. It’s not like, “Just watch me to do this.” Was it Rocky and Bullwinkle? “Watch me pull this rabbit out of my hat.” Remember that? “Watch me give this woman a baby.” That’s not the way God works. And it’s not that Abraham and Sarah won the prayer lottery and that their prayer was the one that was answered. It was that God’s purpose needing a people, and their desire for a child coincide, and when that happens, all I know—I can’t tell you why, when or how—I just know that when it does happen that the greatest possibility for something astounding takes place.

Let me tell you a true story. It’s the story of Laslo Tokes. Laslo Tokes was a pastor in Romania in the 1980’s. He followed a pastor in this little church who had been an instrument of the government, wore the red Communist star on his robe, but Laslo Tokes didn’t do that. Laslo Tokes preached against injustice and he preached against oppression. He called things like he saw them. He was threatened, he was pressured, he was warned, and he was told to be quiet. But he wasn’t quiet. Eventually, his congregation grew from 40 to 5,000—40 people total to 5,000 members.

Finally, the government decided that this just simply couldn’t go on so they decided to arrest him. Somehow word gets out in this area in which Laslo Tokes lives, and people come from everywhere, all different kinds of faith traditions. They come from everywhere and they surround his house and form this human barrier that the police cannot get through to arrest him. For a couple of days, they pray and they sing hymns and he is safe. Finally, unable to lose any more face about this, the police force themselves through the crowd and take him from the house.

Word begins to spread and everybody decides, “We are going to the police station.” Eventually, it is estimated that 200,000 people surround this police station, praying and singing hymns.

It escalates. The Romanian army comes, and at one particular point, they open fire and kill 100 people but the crowd will not disburse. It is at this flash point where you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

Another pastor gets up and addresses the crowd, and only knows to say three words, “Let us pray.” Two hundred thousand people kneel, and in the Romanian language, “Our Father, who art in heaven….” The Lord’s Prayer becomes this act of civil disobedience, and the word spreads throughout the country, and within weeks, the Romanian government falls. All things are possible.

Do you realize that more Christians have lost their lives for their faith in the 20th Century than in the 19 previous centuries? I do not know how many have prayed, and had family and churches who prayed whose prayers were unanswered, but in this particular case, the prayers of the people and the purpose of God come together, and we who would think, “Why bother? All is lost. All we can do is pray,” we who would think there is so little power would be astounded that a government falls because they wanted to arrest the pastor, and people prayed.

If you were to go to Eastern Europe today and ask Pols and Czechs and Romanians why the Iron Curtain fell, among the reasons they would list is prayer because all things are possible when we pray.

We need to see the convergence of both sides of our desire and God’s intent, what Abraham and Sarah wanted with what God needed. We need to see them merge together. What we usually do when we pray is we try to get God to change what God’s purpose is. “Oh God, do what I want you to do.” When we pray, what God is really trying to do is trying to change what we want so that our desire and God’s purposes will come together and God can do the greatest things.

Now you think, “OK. That sounds good, but what if there is something that really troubles me? What if there is something I really want that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with God’s purpose? Can I not pray about that?”

Yes, absolutely.

Think about this kind of encounter which we have with our friends all the time. You see somebody in the grocery store and you say, “How are you doing?” It’s what we all say. “How are you doing?” You know something is not right. Maybe there has been a death in the family or some other problem has taken place and they say, “Fine.”

And you are thinking, “No, I am serious about this. I want to know, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

And you feel like, “Well, that was wasted energy. They are really not going to tell me how they are doing.”

Or someone asks you, “How are you doing?” and you decide you are going to tell them, and it was really clear they didn’t want to hear. I mean have you had that conversation? “I didn’t really want you to tell me. I was just asking.” When either one of those things happen, we feel like it wasn’t really honest. If you can apply that experience to prayer, God really does want to know. God really does want to know what’s on our hearts, what we desire, what we need, what we are concerned about, not just “Well, that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with God. I will just not mention that.” God wants to know.

But on the same token if God wants to speak to our hearts, God would like to know that we listen in return so that in some way, in prayer, what we desire is shaped by God’s purpose and the two can come together and God can do his greatest work.

I don’t know why God says yes to some prayers and no to others, but just because I don’t know why or how or when doesn’t mean that all things are not possible in the hands of God. This is a promise that God keeps. God may not answer my prayer the way I want today, but I believe all things, all things, are possible when we pray. Let us pray together.

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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