Genesis 21:8-21

Hey everybody.
Thanks for joining us on this Monday
and thanks for tolerating us
as we have our pre-conversation here.
But we are making our way through Genesis 21.
We finished with a high point in the story last week as
Abraham and Sarah welcome Isaac to their family.
Finally, at age 100,
after waiting for decades or more,
they have lived into this promise that God had given them
and they now have this child,
Isaac, the child of laughter,
the child of the covenant.
Interestingly enough, the first place that leads
is a return to a story that we’ve seen,
a storyline that we’ve seen,
and a kind of unfortunate story.
This is not,
we don’t,
it would be nice
if as the Bible told these stories,
we followed happy with happy.
But that is often not how human life works,
particularly in the mix of complications
and relationships that have some brokenness in them.
So we revisit Hagar and Ishmael
and that hasn’t seems gotten much better.
So they’ll jump in here at verse eight
and then we’ll talk some of it through.
The child, that would be Isaac,
was weaned and Abraham made a great feast
on the day that Isaac was weaned.
But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian whom she had
born to Abraham,
playing with her son, Isaac.
So she said to Abraham,
cast out the slave woman with her son
for the son of this slave woman
shall not inherit along with my son, Isaac.
The matter distressed Abraham on account of his son.
But God said to Abraham,
do not be distressed because of the boy
and because of your slave woman.
Whatever Sarah says to you,
do as she tells you.
For it is through Isaac that the offspring
shall be named for you.
And for the son of the slave woman
I will make a nation of him also
because he is your offspring.
So Abraham rose early in the morning,
took bread in the skin of water,
gave it to Hagar,
putting it on her shoulder
along with the child and sent her away.
And she departed and wandered about
in the wilderness of Beersheba.
So unfortunately the birth of Isaac
does not settle the bad feelings
that Sarah has been carrying toward Hagar
and the jealousy that she felt,
the disrespect that she felt.
And she sees this moment
where these two half brothers are together.
And instead of feeling some joy about that, she feels anger,
she feels fear, maybe to some extent,
and it hardens her.
And she tells Abraham that
Hagar and her son have to go,
that her son is going to be center stage,
that her son is not going to share resources and that
Ishmael is not going to be the inheritor.
And she tells him,
I want them out.
Yeah, I think it’s,
this is a difficult story.
And I think we return back
because we’ve had this long arc now studying Genesis,
we turn back and we remember
that the whole beginning of this fork in the narrative
where we even have Hagar and Ishmael
comes from Sarah initiating this conversation
with Abram at the time.
And essentially Sarah, I said, hey, listen, let’s get real, let’s be honest, this isn’t going to work.
We need to take some action here.
And then when they do that together by joint decision, this couple does,
they create this new narrative arc.
What’s interesting is we now get here,
God has kept God’s promise.
Last time we were together,
we were celebrating, right?
The goodness of God keeping that promise,
even amidst the doubts,
naming that child laughter,
this reminder, every time you look,
you’ll see the miraculous goodness of God.
All of this is a beautiful thing.
Then we turn our attention forward to this story
and we realize that the dark undertones continue.
I mean, this is not substantially changed.
We now see,
once again, Sarah initiating it.
I don’t think here initiating it in the sense of
that she’s the only one in the wrong.
I think both of the members of this couple are the wrong.
I think it narratively connects back
to that first wondering,
what are we gonna do?
Well, here,
God has kept God’s promise.
So now what are we gonna do with the problem that we made?
I don’t wanna have to deal with this.
And God has a plan for Hagar and Ishmael.
We’ll see that fleshed out as this story goes on.
But the problem is this plan no longer fits
what Abraham and Sarah would like it to anymore.
And so now they’re going to make the same mistake
that started this narrative arc.
They’re gonna do the same exact thing
and they’re gonna take action again
without consulting God or seeking to be faithful.
This is a difficult story because once again,
I think maybe the quick lesson that comes to mind
is when we take matters into our own hands,
we’re often going to see that we run a foul
of God’s greater plan.
And we certainly are gonna see that played out here.
It also, I think, and I wanna be careful
because I’m not trying to
get off the hook here
in regard to this story.
This is a hard story,
particularly when you consider it
through the eyes of the characters.
But in the book of Genesis,
we’ll see this again
when we get to Jacob and talk Jacob and Esau.
It helps to understand that
in the book of Genesis,
sometimes characters are also nations.
Sometimes characters are also lineages.
So when they talk Isaac and Ishmael,
they’re talking Israelites and other, as well as
individual and individual.
And so part of what this is
is who’s going to be center stage
and who’s going to get pushed to the side.
And again, that’s not to say
that there aren’t real troubling questions about this story.
There are, and we’ll continue to work through them
as we talk here,
but it is also to say
that these characters are stand-ins in a bigger story
about nations and peoples.
And sometimes that helps make this story,
if not more palatable,
if not more acceptable,
at least helps us understand it a little better.
So Abraham is now in this bind.
He doesn’t,
you get the sense,
maybe he doesn’t really want to do this.
I mean, that is his firstborn son, technically.
And this woman has been in their household.
That happened, I think it’s been about 13,
14 years ago.
They’ve been with them in that time,
evidently are still with them as part of the household.
And Abraham doesn’t know what to do.
But God says, it’s okay.
I’m going to take care of Ishmael.
I’m going to bless him.
I’m going to make him a nation as well.
But it’s Isaac that is the child of the covenant
and it is to Isaac ultimately
that I am going to direct my blessings,
the blessings that I’ve promised you.
And so don’t be afraid, listen to Sarah,
don’t cause stress, don’t cause problems,
go ahead and do what she says.
Which again, seems like an odd thing for God to say
in some sense, but in the context,
it probably makes sense.
And then Abraham follows through.
He provides,
you know, not as much supplies as you would hope.
You’d like to think donkey full of food
and camel full of water and a couple of people
to go with you and help you get where you’re going.
But the child and the mom are then sort of put out
of the household and given some supplies.
And then here,
the word wandered is interesting in this context
because it could imply a sort of being lost.
We see it used that way of Israel in the book of Exodus,
but it also has this connotation of
nowhere to really go.
You know, we use the word wander after Israel was told
they couldn’t go into Canaan for 40 years.
So wandering means not a permanent spot,
no place.
So this is a woman and child without a home,
without a place.
And those are heavy words.
And I think they take us to heavy places in the story.
Yeah,
I think that
one of the temptations here,
and you use that language Clint,
of you know, getting us off the hook.
I think one of the temptations of a story like this
is to resolve the difficulty.
I’d like to point out that you’re not the only one
to understand the difficulty of the text.
And I would argue that though it may have been understood differently,
even the original author
understood what it meant for a mother and her child
to be put out without supplies.
I mean, this is intentionally provided.
And in fact, I think it is some of the difficult bumps
in the reading of scripture.
So it is chiefly because of difficult moments like this
that I think we can take very seriously the text that we find.
I mean,
the text has gone out of its way to make it clear
that Abraham and Sarah have not been generous with this error.
And so this will only serve to accentuate God’s generosity
and grace to care for this mother and her child.
And in fact,
even to say, Abraham,
you were promised
to be a mighty nation because he was born from you,
he will also have a nation.
So I think there is difficulty here.
And I think actually leaning into it helps us to resolve
some of the tension that we find in it.
Maybe that’s a strange way to say it.
But I would say when you find things that are
uncomfortable,
sometimes being willing to live with that is actually very much
it’s in the service of teaching you what it’s trying to say.
Yeah, and I actually think it gets a little more difficult.
I don’t think we’ve quite gotten to the bottom of that yet.
So let me continue to read here.
“When the water in the skin was gone,
she cast the child under one of the bushes.
Then she went and sat down opposite him,
a good way off,
about the distance of a bow shot.
For she said, ‘Do not let me look upon the death of my child.’
And she sat opposite him.
She lifted up her voice
and wept.
And God heard the voice of the boy
and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven
and said to her, ‘What troubles you,
Hagar?
Do not be afraid,
for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
Come lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand,
for I will make a great nation of him.’
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.
She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy and he grew up.
He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow.
He lived in the wilderness of Peran
and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”
So we see here in the transition that things are very dark
for the woman and child.
She believes that they will not survive this situation.
She moves herself what would probably be a couple of hundred of yards
after she places him under a bush.
And she expects that neither of them,
certainly not the child.
And again,
it is easy to read this and think infant.
Remember, we’re talking about a 13,
14-year-old boy.
She’s not carrying him with her.
They are both at a point of being in danger.
They’re both strong enough that neither of them has any strength left.
She’s not putting an infant under the bush.
And it’s at this point that God visits her.
And this is the second time we’ve seen that in the first version of these stories,
the first go round of these stories.
God also sought out Hagar and this time hearing her cry,
responding to her pain,
visits her.
And again, echoes the promise that Michael has just mentioned,
that Ishmael will grow and become a nation and that God is with them.
And, you know, for the second time,
God has responded to Hagar’s needs.
And in that, Clint, I think we begin to see what you were pointing us to
in the beginning of our conversation.
I think it’s worth noting when you’re willing to see that Scripture
not only includes the layers of human experience.
So here we see the layers of the difficulty of this young woman,
of her son.
You see the layers of Abraham and Sarah and their interactions with God.
You see the layer of God’s faithful promise and the promise that he’s keeping.
Then you also see even above that what you named,
this idea of there’s the making of the nations happening.
When the Scriptures come to Genesis,
it’s not just talking about your Genesis
or an individual Genesis.
Sometimes we make the mistake of making it all about the individual people.
It has much more in mind than that.
It’s telling the story of the whole world.
It’s telling the story of how all of these people began.
And here we see in the crucible of difficulty,
a people being born.
And in particular,
a people who are good with the bow,
right?
These details are going to speak to that original audience,
the details that they all share in common.
Oh, yeah,
the levels are really good at sports.
Oh, yeah, the Gwecky’s are computer nerds.
Like here,
we begin to learn something about the Genesis of how the world was
the way that it was when this was written.
And that is unto itself, I think,
a powerful
message about God’s working in the world,
that God fundamentally works with the reality that is.
In fact, God’s working with Abraham and Sarah’s really complicated
and in some ways condemnable life choices.
God’s still being faithful to these other people in it.
That’s not the whole point of the story,
but it’s part of the story.
And I think that if we’re willing to draw back and see all of these different layers,
maybe stories like this become more approachable,
even if they’re not easy to understand.
Yeah, and this is a deliverance story.
It’s a difficult one because the
circumstances from which she is delivered seem so preventable and seem
so distasteful, but God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water
and she fills the skin and gives the boy a drink.
And then the boy settles in this southern
desert area, this wilderness.
And again, as Michael just said,
that’s what the desert people,
he’s able to find water.
The Ishmaelites become a tribe that thrives in a very hard place.
There’s a certain hardiness to them and we see that projected here.
This would be a tough story to preach.
We see what we’ve always seen from Abraham.
Abraham doing what God has said.
We’re going to have one more instance of that that is probably even more difficult than this one.
But Abraham responds.
Sarah tells him what to do.
He’s not sure.
God says it’s okay.
He does it.
He puts that trust in God.
Hagar is in need for the second time through really arguably no fault of her own.
Maybe in that first story she did or didn’t look oddly at Sarah,
that was the charge.
But here,
she
doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong.
There’s obviously bad blood between them.
And yet, God shows up to rescue her primarily to deliver the boy
and provides deliverance for literally these outcasts.
And that’s going to become an important theme throughout the rest of the Old Testament.
There’s some profound stuff in this text,
but it’s not easy stuff.
So I want to ask you a question here quick.
Can you think of a story that we’ve had before this one with that exact language of eyes being opened?
I’m trying to think.
The garden.
Their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked.
Right,
right.
I think that that is notable.
Certainly, if you want to read forward into the New Testament,
Jesus is about the work of opening eyes.
There’s a strong theme of blindness throughout the whole New Testament,
this idea of the revelation of Jesus Christ that changes.
That’s not what has in mind here directly,
but that’s an interesting theme.
This idea that the water was there,
the provision was already provided,
but she couldn’t see it.
And it was God’s work that made that vision possible.
So that’s a beautiful sort of bump in that text.
Especially, yeah, if you connect that back to the beginning with Adam and Eve,
that’s interesting as well.
It would be tough to hold this up as a major lesson because Hagar is such a bruised character.
But the point is not that she sees the water.
In the context of the story, obviously,
that’s what delivers her.
But the point is that she sees that God is faithful to her,
that God is good in the midst of her struggles.
Hagar is one of the few characters in the Bible who really…
We don’t hear a lot of…
There’s not a lot of resolution in this story.
We don’t come back and find out,
“Oh, and by the way,
she married a king and lived in a pet.”
She is the kind of epitome of a hard knock life.
And yet,
God, who is faithful to Abraham,
has also now on two occasions
been faithful and delivered Hagar.
It would be better for all of us if he didn’t have to.
We’d like that better.
But God has been good to her when life has not been good to her.
And I think that does make her a patron saint of sorts for people who have struggled with
difficulties that they may not have deserved.
And I think that Hagar is one of those characters that we can look at and say
that God is good sometimes when life isn’t.
It’s really interesting when Genesis is tracking God’s story through Abraham’s story,
and then we find other people’s stories as they intersect with Abraham’s story
and see how that’s still telling God’s story.
It is nuanced and human and messy and complicated.
And that’s why we’re doing this study,
is we’re trying to learn from it.
So glad that you’ve been with us, friends.
Thanks, everybody.