We turn in our Bibles to Genesis chapter 18. Going to read verses one through 15. And I do invite you to stand as you get to this place. It's on page 12 of your Pew Bibles. Genesis 18, one through 15. And the Lord God 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 say is a 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. Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased 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 grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen, you may be seated. Is God our friend? We know he's our creator. We know he's our redeemer. We call him Lord. And these things we can affirm of him because we know he's high and he's lifted up, he's exalted. But friend? To call God friend, boy, that seems very personal, very intimate. Sometimes, in some ways, even a little too intimate. But God... is called friend, he's called Abraham's friend. And we see this in the scriptures. In fact, Abraham is the only man in the Bible who is called friend of God. We heard it in the first scripture reading this morning from Mr. Jones. God is speaking through the prophet Isaiah and he says, Abraham, my friend. And he does this two other places in the scriptures. The Lord calls Abraham his friend in James chapter 2, 23. And he calls Abraham his friend in 2 Chronicles 27. This special, intimate relationship with Abraham, which we see a glimpse of in our passage this morning in Genesis chapter 18. Abraham, my friend. Abraham, my companion. Abraham, the man whom God, the God of the heavens, the God of the universe, condescended to meet with face-to-face fellowship, to covenant with personally, to do life with, to share his plans with, to speak with, to eat with. Abraham, my friend. The good news is that this special relationship, this friendship is available to us, to you. Friendship with God is not just a privilege for Abraham. It belongs to everyone who trusts in Jesus. In fact, you remember what Jesus said in John chapter 15. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you Friends. He says greater love has no man than this. He would lay down his life for his friends. Along with Father Abraham. We can be called friend of God. God can say of us, my friends. And this is something that we don't just want to pass by quickly. In fact, what we're going to do this morning is look at these, this word of friendship that God extends to Abraham, these other places in the scriptures. And then I want to look from there and look back and see Genesis chapter 18 in light of this and see how Genesis chapter 18 is this glimpse of what that friendship looks like. And then this, This friendship that now we enter into and can be part of. Genesis chapter 18 shows us the features of our friendship with God. By faith in Christ, God is our friend. By faith in Christ, God is your friend. What does that look like? Well, I want you to see, first of all, that we have a friend who communes with us. We have a friend who fellowships with us, who comes close to us, who lives life with us. He is not a distant God, far off and separated from the details of our lives. although this is sometimes how we think of Him, isn't it? It's certainly how our culture tends to think of God. There's this phrase I've used in sermons before, moral therapeutic deism. And what I mean by that is that most people in our world today, when they think of God, they think of Him as this being who has some moral rules that you live by, and He's kind of out there and separated from you. and doesn't really care about the details of your life, unless something really bad has happened, there's a death in the family, or you're in a hard spot, and then you can count on him to lend you an ear. But otherwise, he's aloof, he's off, he doesn't intrude into the details of your lives. And that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is up close and personal, face-to-face fellowship, friendship. Notice, how God desires to share life with his saints. And we see this here with him coming to Abraham. One day he comes disguised as it were as a weary traveler. Here's Abraham out. He's a nomad in the desert, right? He's a nomad in the promised land, moving around his tent. He doesn't have a home. And there's something that's true of nomads. You could think of the Bedouin tribes today. I've seen them out in Israel, moving around in the desert lands. And you see them and you think they probably are out there because they don't want to be around anyone. It's not necessarily true. In fact, what I've heard is that it can be a pretty lonely life and they love visitors. They love when guests arrive. Well, suddenly God shows up as a guest, and he's flanked by two angels. We know that they're angels because in the next chapter, these angels are the ones who go to Sodom and Gomorrah and have that famous confrontation. But here's God, and he's appearing as a weary traveler. He's come in the form, as it were, or the shape or the appearance of a man. We don't know exactly how much of this Abraham knows. He says grand things about this visitor, but the things he says could be said almost of anyone who would show up. You know, that title Lord can apply to God, but it can also apply to someone who shows up and you're giving honor to them, right? And so we don't know how much Abraham knows at first, but just he has visitors. He has visitors who he gives great weight and honor to, and you see him rushing around. What's he doing? He's preparing a meal. He says, oh, I have a bit of bread for you, but he brings out more than bread, doesn't he? He has Sarah making bread by hand, and then he goes and he takes one of the best of his flock, one of his calves, and he says, I'm going to offer this up as a grand feast for these visitors. This is good, old-fashioned hospitality in the desert. Now, there's a lesson here, if you think back to the summer study in Rosaria Butterfield, there's a lesson in what hospitality ought to look like. Abraham here gives you a picture of good hospitality, but that's not where we're focusing this morning. Where we're focusing is on the God who comes and condescends to the level of Abraham such that he does what? He says, I'll be your guest for a day. I'll come into your tent. I'll sit in the shade of a tree with you. And guess what? I'm going to let you serve me. Can you imagine this? The God of the heavens has come and as it were said, I'm coming to your house today. And I'm going to sit and be fed by you. I'm going to let you do hospitality for me. I'm going to eat with you. Abraham and God and these angel companions sit down under the shade of some trees and start to eat a home cooked meal. Now this is the only time before the incarnation that God eats something set before him. Think about this. There's other places in the Old Testament before the coming of Christ where there is food that is set before the Lord. One is in the book of Judges, when Manoah offers up a meal as a sacrifice before the Lord, and what happens? Fire comes down from heaven and devours it as a sign that God has accepted the sacrifice, but there's no sitting and eating. Fire descending and consuming it. The same thing happens with Elijah, right, and the prophets of Baal. A sacrifice set before the Lord. The fire comes down and consumes it. But here in Genesis chapter 18 is the only place before the New Testament, before the coming of Christ, where God says, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna eat what's served to me. I'm going to chew it. I'm going to share it with you. Think of how meals, play an important role in our closest relationships. And you can think of some, maybe you have a day of the week when you get together with your family. Some of us do that. Some of us have the custom of saying, oh, there's a Tuesday night dinner with grandma. Right? And it's those times where you can reflect back and say, those are special times. That's where the family bonds, and we're not really thinking about the formality of the event, but the food, the conversation, it blends, and we feel ourselves growing closer together. Think of first dates. birthday parties, family dinners, fellowship meals, and how so many of these things revolve around food. Why? Because food and fellowship are intertwined. Because food and fellowship are designed to go together. And then think of how the God of the heavens, the God who made Abraham, sits down outside his tent and eats a feast prepared by Abraham, who says, I'm gonna come and do life with you. I'm going to come and bond over a meal. I'm gonna eat what you've served me. I know, at least with my Tuesday night dinner with my grandmother, when I get to go to that, she is just delighted to get food in front of me. And then she's, what'd you think of it? Did you enjoy it? Could I do anything different next time? And here you have God giving Abraham that kind of privilege. Go ahead, serve me. Go ahead, give me something that you like. I'll share it with you. Now what's the lesson here? The lesson here is that God desires to draw near to us in fellowship. The covenant idea, the idea of God covenanting with us is more than what is truly the case that we have one who pledges himself to us and pledges to purify us and promises to be our Lord and has control over our lives. Yes, all of that, but also it is designed such that we know God so up close and personal that we can call him friend. Personal, close fellowship. That's the goal. that God would talk with you and walk with you and share life with you and know, and that when you come and draw close to God and know him in Jesus Christ, that you would do what? That you would spend your whole lives knowing more and more of his mind and he would evidence that he already knows everything about you. Are you uncomfortable with a God who desires to befriend you? and who moves to befriend you, if that's an uncomfortable idea and you say, that's a little bit too close, that's not the God that I am looking for, then you need to go back to the scriptures because like it or not, this is what God is after in his covenant relationship with you. Remember that God took on our flesh. Remember that he came to dwell with us, really and actually. in the incarnation when Jesus Christ, the Son of God took on flesh and went about the personal work of Christ Jesus. And then in the Lord's Supper, what did he do? Our divine friend takes Abraham's place as host and serves us a meal. A meal at the cost of his very life. He says, look, I've prepared something for you. I desire to share it with you. And the way for this to be true is for me to die for you. Won't you come near, be my friend? Won't you come near and know something of my mind? Won't you come near and see what I love? If we trust in Christ, we are friends of God and we can know his thoughts more deeply than the more we walk with him. We have a friend who communes with us Pay attention to that word commune because we call the Lord's Supper communion. That's another way we speak of it. There are different dimensions of the Lord's Supper, right? But one of those dimensions is a friendship meal, a fellowship meal where God says, won't you come and partake of this so that I can come close and show you who I am, so that I can meet you at the table, so that I can serve you. We have a friend who communes with us. We also have a friend who confronts us. And we know this is true of friendship, that the best kinds of friends don't just let us do whatever we want. They don't just visit for the social calls and check off the box, but they come and they tell us hard things. Proverbs 27, six, faithful are the wounds of a friend. You've probably learned this, that the best kinds of friends are ones who just at the right time say, hey, brother, You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. There's a better way. You say, you know, you're a faithful friend because you're willing to point that out. Well, so it is with God, our friend. And Abraham learned that. Abraham saw that when God came and visited his household, it was more than just a social call because what God came to do was to actually gently but firmly confront Abraham and his wife, Sarah, about a seed of doubt that was beginning to be sown in their hearts. And that seed of doubt was what? That God really wasn't going to be faithful to his promise. That's deep down what Sarah believed, and it had gotten them in trouble before, hadn't it? Think back to Genesis chapter 16. And even before that, think of all the times when Abraham and Sarah, because they were doubting that God really would give them a child, took things into their own hand, and then what happened? Chaos. Setback. But God is a loving friend, and he is coming to them to say, no more of that doubt. Don't you know that I'm going to provide for you? He does it with Sarah. At some point during this fellowship meal, Abraham must've realized that these visitors weren't normal and that he had divine company. Wherever that happened, whenever it happened, it surely happened when he said, I will come back this time next year. By that time, your wife Sarah will have a son. Okay, I'm not talking to an ordinary visitor. This is that thing that God's been saying a lot. And here he is, he's in front of me and he's speaking to me and At this time and in this kind of culture, the men would eat separately from the women. And so Sarah is in another room. In fact, she's kind of listening in outside the tent and her ear is perking up when she hears reference to this. And then what happens? She laughs, but it's not laughing out loud. It's not LOL. It's a laugh in her mind, right? And of course, you know what I'm talking about. When you hear someone say something, you kind of keep a straight face, but you're thinking, no way. You know, it almost like, not gonna happen. I'll be polite. I'm not gonna laugh out loud to offend my guests, but that's not gonna happen. When God comes and assures, reassures the couple that they are indeed going to have their own offspring, Sarah laughs in her mind. Why? Because she's about 90 years old. And as the text says, the way of women is well past her, well behind her. And so this laugh in her mind goes something like this. Keep dreaming. There's just no way. I'm 90 years old. Pigs will fly when I'm pregnant. Thanks for the nice words. Come back, pay your visit, but you're gonna see that I still don't have a baby in a year. You're crazy if you think I'm gonna have a baby. Well, we have to call this laughter for what it is. It's the laughter of unbelief. It's the laughter of distrust. This is nothing to make light of. This is a laughter that we know in our own selves, right? Where do you laugh at God? Even if you're not LOLing, God knows your hearts. He knows your mind. He knows everything about you. He knew exactly what was going through Sarah's mind. Where is it when we hear promises of God and we say, yeah, but that's not gonna happen. Yeah. Nice words, but I don't think so. Where are you most tempted to laugh? The laugh of unbelief. Say, yeah, I'm not seeing that, no way. God loves us too much to let distrust and disobedience take hold, even when it's just a little root. He loves us too much to let that little root grow and grow and grow. And so you can imagine Sarah's surprise when God suddenly confronts her and says, Abraham, ask your wife why she laughed in her mind about what I said. And then what does Sarah say? Abraham calls her in and Sarah says, I didn't laugh. And then what does God say? Yeah, you did. It's amazing. I still, I wonder what the look was like on Sarah's face. She's like, God knows us so well. He knows us perfectly. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows the laughs that don't even come out, but that stay in our minds. He knows the distrust that's in our heart. This is the kind of friend we have, one who knows us so intimately that he is willing to come and not just know us, but also confront us and say, I'm gonna inflict a faithful wound here. You've got to stop that. Where does this happen today still? It happens still as God in his perfect expert way speaks through his word and continues to point to our sins. Have you ever noticed how the word convicts us even when there are things that we haven't told another person? Another, no human being knows something we've been struggling with or things going on in our mind. And then it's like the word of God comes, maybe it's in a sermon, and maybe the pastor puts an application and you're like, whoa, he's speaking to me. And then Wednesday night home group, it comes up again. And then in Sunday school, or while you're reading the scripture on your own, you're saying, it just feels like God keeps poking at this thing like he knows my mind, like he knows my heart. Well, guess what he does? And God in his own expert way will convict us with his word, even about the things that we haven't put into words to other people, even about the laughs that don't come out loud. And my admonition to you from the word is to receive this correction from the Lord as from a faithful friend. to not say, okay, moving on to something else, okay, I'm gonna stay away from worship, I'm gonna stay away from home group, I'm going to flee from this conviction. No, receive the wounds inflicted from God's word as those of a faithful friend who knows you better than you know yourself. This is the kind of friend we have. He meets us, he communes with us. He does, he confronts us when we sin. In the right time, in the right place, he does. But he doesn't leave us with that. He also comforts us. And his comfort is the best kind of comfort. A friend is meant to comfort. A friend is meant, amongst other things, to come alongside at a time of struggle and say, don't fail now, I'm here with you. Don't fail now, I'm here to help you. And is this not what we see with God? That he is this kind of friend to Abraham and to Sarah and to us? Abram and Sarah's friend does not leave the tent without extending tremendous comfort. And it comes in the form of a question, which we all ought to wrestle with. One of the great questions of the Bible. Is anything too hard for God? Is anything too hard for God? Now that question demands an answer from every single one of us. Is anything too hard for God? Because each of us, in our own different ways, this week has had trouble believing that our best friend will come through for us. There are different ways, different relationships, different sin struggles in our lives in which we've just, that seed of doubt has said, you know, I don't know how this one's gonna have an answer. I don't know how this is gonna get worked out. I don't know how this is gonna happen. Let me ask you this. Is it too hard for God to overcome your guilt and shame? Some of you have wrestled so much with this question this week. Is it too hard for God to forgive you all your offenses? And you live life as if, indeed, it is too hard. You live life as if there's this impossibility that you'll never be accepted, and so you wallow in the guilt and the shame when God says, what does he say? What's the answer to this? Is there anything too hard for God? No, no. Jesus himself says this in Mark 10, verse 27. He says, remember that question that Abraham was asked? I've got an answer. Nothing is impossible for God. Is it too hard for God to forgive you all your offenses? Is it too hard for him to bring you safely through the darkest of situations? Is it too hard for him to raise the dead? Is it too hard? For him to root out sin in your life, is it too hard? For him to take a broken relationship, a struggling marriage? And to breathe life and to reunite what is separated? No, nothing is impossible for God. And you need to realize this about your friend, your heavenly friend. Your salvation was not too hard for God, and so nothing is impossible for him. Now think about this. Your salvation looked utterly impossible. We're talking about us, each one of us being a sinner, eternally separated from God, and there being not one single thing that we could do of our own strength to resolve that issue. We sinned, we sinned in Adam. And then we personally sinned. And the things that we make light of, even sins that we've forgotten, even one of them, condemns us for eternity, because God is perfect, and we are imperfect, and we are separated from Him. Nothing we can do to fix that problem. But God did the impossible. He remained just. He punished sin, because that's who God is. The God who punishes sin, but He punished sin by laying it upon His Son. He did the impossible, the seemingly impossible, by taking upon flesh, by taking the punishment for our sin on the cross, and then, raising Christ Jesus from the dead so that we in him might have that newness of life and might have the gift of the Holy Spirit reunited to him and growing in grace all the way to glory with heaven itself being our inheritance. Nothing is impossible for God. Your salvation should teach you that. And so nothing else is impossible for him. And I want you to see something about our friend here. Our friend, our heavenly friend God, he gets the last laugh in this text. Because he reveals the name of this son that will be born a year after this, and his name is Isaac. You know what the word, the name Isaac means in Hebrew? Ha, ha, ha. It's like naming your child, Mr. Ha-ha-ha, Mr. Laughter. Literally the name Isaac in Hebrew sounds like a laugh, if you hear it in Hebrew. And what God is saying is, just wait, you're gonna have this son, he's gonna be born, and what's his name gonna be? Ha-ha-ha. And that's God's laughter. That's not Sarah's, but God saying, you thought that I'd failed you. You thought I'd given up on you. You thought I wasn't a faithful friend, but I am. What a faithful friend we have. One who turns our laughter of distrust into a laughter that says, look at what my friend has done for me. Will you not go to this friend now? Will you not run to this faithful friend? Let us go to him now in times of trouble and in times of praise. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all you've done for us and for how you are a friend that is close, as close as a friend gets. We ask, Lord, that in the areas of our life where we want you to be distant, that we would we would sacrifice that pride and we would accept you as a close and faithful friend. And we pray that in the areas where we are struggling to allow your conviction to take full fruit, that we would receive your firm corrections as those from a faithful friend who inflicts good wounds upon us in order to get us back on the right track. Lord, we pray that in all the areas where we are doubting, where there is laughter, not of joy, but of distrust in our hearts, that you would address that very laughter, that you would root it out of us, and instead a different kind of laughter would come forth, one of joy and praise, the kind of laughter that Sarah had when she saw her son and saw that you were really faithful to your promise, long after it was possible for man to be faithful. Lord, we pray that in our own lives, the things that are seemingly impossible would be overcome by your grace and that we would get such a view of this that we would laugh properly, the laugh that you've taught us, the laughter of joy and praise. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. We come now to the time of the Lord's Supper. I invite the leaders of the church to come and help serve.