Inside Out - Surprise

Introduction

Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at emotions, as modeled in the Pixar movie, Inside Out. So far we have looked at Sadness, Fear, and Anger. We have Disgust and Joy yet to do.

But today, we have a Surprise Sermon. Yes, a sermon on Surprise. Surprised? Even though Inside Out lacked Surprise, the psychologist who consulted on the film lists 7 core emotions, the five in the movie as well as surprise and contempt. And, no, we have no plans to do a sermon on contempt—you will have to settle for just Stephens disgust sermon.

So, in the absence of an Inside Out clip to show you, I’m just going to have to give you an example.

Example of Surprise

In the final weeks of my first time in Japan I decided to take the opportunity to go on a hike with friends. The day of the hike dawned fine and cold, perfect hiking weather. We had three guys and four girls. The guys were Glen, another friend called Graham, and myself. The girls were Michelle, a Canadian, Sanae and Miki, both Japanese, and Mable, a Hong Kong Australian girl.

After some time climbing the steep mountainside trail we encountered a surprise: snow. Now, snow hiking is not that unusual in Japan, but you have to be ready for it. Miki, Sanae, and Mable were not. They were all wearing everyday shoes with virtually no grip, especially on snow. At this barrier the group splintered in surprising ways.

One of the faultlines was the pre-existing relationships. At this time, I had a bit of a crush on Michelle, the Canadian. I had told Glen about this, and he had taken this onboard to such an extent that he was now interested in her, too. Michelle herself was worried about getting to an English lesson she was teaching later in the day, and so she and Glenn disappeared into the distance, trying to get back sooner. That left me disgruntled, and alone with Graham to help the three girls in their slippery shoes.

Now, Graham had come to Japan in pursuit of Sanae, and he hadn’t quite given up on that pursuit yet. So he naturally paid more attention to Sanae. Which left Miki and Mable. And me.

We got to a point near the summit where the trail led straight up the slope, with a rope to pull yourself up. Pulling yourself up slippery snow is a challenging exercise even with good gear. It was just one surprise after another, this hike!

Graham managed to get Sanae and Miki up the slope, but Mable simply didn’t have the upper body strength to haul her tall body up. We eventually made it up the slope with me leading her from tree-to-tree, wedging her feet into the angle between the tree and slope. In between trees, I simply stamped my foot down into the snow to make a temporary angle she could stand in. At the beginning of the day I had certainly not expected to be getting so close to a willowy Chinese beauty. Another surprise.

Heading down was more treacherous. The path was narrow and slippery and the hillside below treacherously steep. At one point Sanae slipped off, but Graham grabbed her and he then needed me to help get enough traction to pull her back up. I admired how Mable avoided this by sliding down the whole way on her backside. Of course, she ruined her jeans.

We all made it back safely, and I had learnt a lot about planning hikes.

A couple of weeks later I left for America, leaving Japan forever, as far as I was aware. In America I was a bit surprised to find this girl, Mable, on my mind. Her persistence had impressed me, and the unexpected intimacy of climbing that steep snowy slope was memorable. Of course, the bigger surprise was yet to come, because I was going to find myself back in Japan, with the chance to get to know this Mable better.

Surprise in Scripture

Now, hopefully you got the idea from that story that surprise can be both pleasant and unpleasant, and even both at once, but that it always gets our attention.

How does surprise work in Scripture?

Our reading for today is the story of Isaac, from Genesis 18:

Genesis 18:1–15 CSB

1 The Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent during the heat of the day. 2 He looked up, and he saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them, bowed to the ground, 3 and said, “My lord, if I have found favor with you, please do not go on past your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, that you may wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 I will bring a bit of bread so that you may strengthen yourselves. This is why you have passed your servant’s way. Later, you can continue on.” “Yes,” they replied, “do as you have said.” 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, “Quick! Knead three measures of fine flour and make bread.” 7 Abraham ran to the herd and got a tender, choice calf. He gave it to a young man, who hurried to prepare it. 8 Then Abraham took curds and milk, as well as the calf that he had prepared, and set them before the men. He served them as they ate under the tree. 9 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he answered. 10 The Lord said, “I will certainly come back to you in about a year’s time, and your wife Sarah will have a son!” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were old and getting on in years. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12 So she laughed to herself: “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I have delight?” 13 But the Lord asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Can I really have a baby when I’m old?’ 14 Is anything impossible for the Lord? At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son.” 15 Sarah denied it. “I did not laugh,” she said, because she was afraid. But he replied, “No, you did laugh.”

The story of Isaac, which has several more episodes, is a great example of how surprise works in the Bible. So, let’s dig into it.

God is never surprised

The first thing to note is that God is the one revealing the surprise, not the one getting surprised. In fact, he never gets surprised. Why not? Because he already knows everything.

In Psalm 139, David writes of God’s intimate knowledge of us:

Psalm 139:16 NIV

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

It’s impossible to be surprised if you already know everything, including what is yet to come.

But then we have a puzzle: Jesus is God, but Jesus can be surprised, as we see in Matthew:

Matthew 24:36 NLT

36 “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.

Jesus doesn’t know the time of his own second coming! How can this work? Well, you must remember that Jesus is both God and man. In Philippians Paul explains how Jesus,

Philippians 2:6–7 ESV

6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Jesus emptied himself of some of his divinity in some mysterious way so that he could join himself with us and stand in our place and take our punishment on himself. We have to conclude that one of the things Jesus emptied himself of was omniscience, the knowledge of all things. Like us, then, he is open to surprise.

How God uses surprise

The second thing to note in the Isaac story is that God uses surprise to get our attention. He does this consistently throughout Scripture: in the prophets, the wisdom literature, in Jesus’ teaching in the gospels and in the letters of the apostles. As we’ve mentioned, even the second coming is going to be a surprise, and God uses that surprise to keep us ready.

How does God use surprise in Isaac’s story, though?

For a start, God made a surprise appearance, appearing suddenly in front of Abraham’s home and demanding his attention. Abraham and Sarah scurried about to prepare a meal for their surprise guests, but the surprises were not over. God had come to announce that his promise was finally coming true: they will have a son. Sarah’s response made it clear that she had given up hope in that. She was surprised into a laugh. A year later, Isaac was born. Pay attention to the beautiful notes of surprise and delight in that account:

Genesis 21:2–7 ESV

2 And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” 7 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.”

Think about this: if God had given Abraham and Sarah a son when they were a normal age, would they have been surprised and delighted? Sure, they would have been happy, but the extra zing of surprise would have been missing, and their faith would not have been stretched at all. God’s surprise powerfully grew their faith!

God still had an Isaac surprise to grow Abraham’s faith! Years later God made the most surprising request of Abraham:

Genesis 22:2 NLT

2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

This was not a pleasant surprise, unlike the birth of Isaac. But by now Abraham had learnt to trust God, so he immediately set out in obedience.

But God had another surprise in store:

Genesis 22:10–14 NLT

10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” 12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” 13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

Do you think God’s provision would have been as memorable if he had simply asked Abraham to go to a mountain where he would find a ram to sacrifice? Would Abraham have known how far he could trust God if God had simply said “I will always provide?” Of course not! God used surprise to weld his providence into Abraham’s memory, so that even his descendants would never forget it. And we remember this story still!

God uses surprise over and over again. Choosing Jacob over Esau, using the kidnapped Joseph to save not only Egypt but Israel, using the exiled Moses and shocking plagues to rescue his people. The prophets are called to surprise people, running around naked, preaching to pagan Nineveh, cooking on poo, marrying a prostitute, and so on.

And, at last, in the biggest surprise of all, God himself came into the world as a baby born in a stable, who was then hung on a cross! Almost everything Jesus said and did was a surprise. It’s hard for us to see how shocking his ministry was, because we’re so familiar with it. But shocking it was, and is.

How should we handle surprise?

Which leads us to the question, how should we handle surprise? Does God still want to surprise us? I think the answer to that is yes, as the story of my hike illustrated. After all, I ended up married to one of those girls, and not to the one that I might have initially expected, and I think God was at work there, as always.

Last term we studied the parables, and we found that Jesus always placed a surprising development in his parables. The prodigal son wasted the family’s money on sin but gets a huge welcome home. Everyone gets paid the same no matter how long they worked. The dishonest steward is complimented on his shrewdness. And so on. The surprise grabs our attention. It forces us to think, to engage with the parable.

God still does that to us today. When we read the Bible we must be open to its shock value. Anger is equivalent to murder? What on earth? We need to think about that.

At the same time we must also be open to the surprise and delight of an Isaac, or a Mable. God’s blessings are so often sweetened by their surprising arrival or nature.

And when we share the story of Jesus with others, we should imitate God, and seek to surprise. Don’t sugar coat our sin or the cross that paid for it. Don’t play down the astonishing grace of God.

We have a God who delights to surprise and astonish his children. We live in a world full of wonderful surprises. Let’s enjoy them and share them.

Let’s pray.