Genesis 21, let me pray again real quick before we get going. Father God, thank you for the opportunity to gather as your people this morning. And Father, we ask that just as Scott did just pray, that you would help me to clearly articulate your word to your people.
Father, we ask that as we gather under your word that you would instruct us by it, conform us to the image of your son, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Do you ever feel forgotten by God as if God doesn't know what's going on in your life, or if he does know, he doesn't care.
He doesn't see it's not important to him. Even King David in Psalm 13 and verse one cries out, Oh Lord, how long will you forget me forever? I think what we're going to see in chapter 21 of Genesis is that God has not forgotten you. God has not forgotten his promises to you.
God is faithful and he remembers his people and he remembers his word. If you feel forgotten or forsaken, trust the faithful God. He will transform your morning into joy.
Luke chapter six and verse 21 says, blessed are you who mourn now for you will be comforted. Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh. First thing we see in Genesis chapter 21, we'll read the first seven verses.
What we'll see here is that God is the faithful laugh giver. It's not how we normally think of God, a laugh giver, but that's exactly what we see here. Genesis 21 beginning in verse one says the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son, Isaac, when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son, Isaac, was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me.
And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. So we remember where these people are coming from. 25 years earlier, God had called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of the land of his forefathers, where they were moon worshipers.
And he said, I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make you a great people. I'm going to give you a land.
And through you will all the nations of the earth be blessed. And of course, at that time, this is a remarkable thing for God to say to Abraham, who's 75 years old, has a 65 year old wife who is barren. And over the years, this has been tested.
And so about 11 years after they left Ur of the Chaldeans, Sarah is ready to give up on God's promise and says, well, maybe we can help him out. And so she offers her maid servant, Hagar, to Abraham to have a child with her. They do.
Child's name is Ishmael. And God says, no, Ishmael is not going to inherit. You will have a son through Sarah.
But then still another 14 years pass before this moment. And back in chapter 18, we had seen God had come once again to Abraham and had said to him about this time next year, your wife will have a son. And Sarah is standing in the tent and she overhears this conversation and she laughs.
And it seems to be like a sarcastic, almost sad and bitter laughter. Now that I am old here in my age here past the age of childbearing, and then some will, will I have pleasure? Will I have a child? It's hard for her to believe. And yet we come to this moment and here is exactly what has happened.
She has had a son. God specializes in the impossible. Three times in these seven verses, it is reiterated how old Abraham is.
In verse two, Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. Verse five, Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Verse seven, Sarah says, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children yet I have borne him a son in his old age.
You know, it seems like at places it's her old age that makes it impossible. And yet it is remarkable that even in Abraham's old age, he has waited and waited and waited, and God has fulfilled this impossible seeming promise. As you read this this morning, I wonder what impossible seeming promises has God made to you? And I go, God's never like opened up the clouds and spoke to me.
Well, so, but I would submit to you that nearly every promise, certainly all the promises concerning salvation on their own are impossible promises apart from God. In the New Testament, Jesus says to the disciples, it is harder, is easier, rather is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I don't know if you've ever seen a needle or a camel.
They don't fit like that. Jesus says, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of heaven. And in their society, like ours, you would look at a rich person and you would go, that's the person who has all the resources.
That's the person who must have the favor and the blessing and the pleasure of God. And if they can't get into heaven, who can? And Jesus says, with man, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.
Salvation itself is an impossible promise if you take God out of consideration. And he promises things like 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To have my sins paid for, forgiven, I can't accomplish anything.
I can't earn that. That's an impossible gift, promise. He promises in Romans 8, 28, to work all things together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.
I don't know if you look at your own life and ever think, how could good come from this? We just had a situation yesterday. I was like, well, this is God's will because it happened, but I don't know how it's good. And it was a pretty minor thing, but major things happen all the time.
We see a relationship disintegrate. Our parents get divorced. A child dies.
Tragedy strikes constantly. And we ask, how could God bring good about? And sometimes we get to see that happen. Like we see a good result, but oftentimes we don't get to see it.
So how do we trust? How can we know? Hebrews 13 and verse 5, when the author to the Hebrews is encouraging the believers to whom he is writing to keep trusting God, he says, he will never leave you or forsake you. That's a hard thing to believe. It's a hard thing to see.
Jesus in John chapter 14 tells his disciples that he is going away, but that he's going away to prepare an eternal home for them. These, these promises in scripture are all for things that we can't actually see them happen, right? We can't observe them the way we would if we were trying to prove something scientifically. We don't get the evidence right in front of us.
We have to take God at his word that all of these things are true. All of these promises seem unseen. And oftentimes they feel unreal, but God gave Abraham and Sarah their son as a down payment as future of the future fulfillment of all the other promises he made.
I said, Genesis 12, God promised them to make them into a mighty people that all the nations of the earth will bless to them, that they would have this land. Abraham gets to see none of that. He doesn't, he doesn't see Isaac become a mighty nation.
He doesn't see all of the nations of the earth blessed through his family. He doesn't even possess anything in the land of Canaan. He moves there, but he doesn't possess anything except his tents and his household that travels around.
Hebrews chapter 11 verses eight through 12 says this, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out of the place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going by faith. He went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob heirs with him of the same promise where he was looking forward to a city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God by faith.
Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised therefore from one man and him as good as dead. That's how old he was. We're born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Somewhere Sarah goes from disbelieving laughter in chapter 18 to deciding, I do trust that God is able to give me this power to conceive. And God responds to that faith by blessing her by giving her what he had promised. Brothers and sisters trust the faithful God to fulfill his promises.
All of them. He turned Sarah's laughter of sarcasm and pain into laughter of joy. Even the name of the child, Isaac means he laughs.
God turns sorrow into laughing and joy. We also see in this chapter that God is the faithful son saver. So verses 18 through 21, it's really one of the more painful stories in Genesis, at least for Abraham.
It says, as the child grew, Isaac grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. That's probably two, three, maybe four years later.
But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian whom she had born to Abraham laughing. And she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac. I think it was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son.
But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy. And because of your slave woman, whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you for through Isaac, shall your offspring be named. And I will make you a nation.
I will make rather, I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
So there's this celebration, like they're joyful. The laughter has stretched out for years now. And they get to the point where the child is weaned and Abraham throws a great feast.
But into this joyous time, this time of celebration, Sarah sees Ishmael, who's probably now 16, 17 years old, and he is mockingly laughing at the child. I can't imagine a 16-year-old boy ever doing something like that, could we? Mocking a smaller child. And Sarah, I think rightly, foresees that this will be an issue.
Abraham's loyalties are split between his sons. This happens in blended families, doesn't it? Like where there can be a tension, there can be a pull. And Sarah rightly understands that her son is the child of promise.
He is the one whom God has promised the inheritance, the descendants of Abraham are to be named through Isaac, not Ishmael. And she says, send him away. And Abraham, again, understandably says, I don't want to do that.
That's my son. You know, for, you know, 14 years, this is the only son Abraham has. He's deeply attached to him.
He doesn't want to send him away. And so he's resisting this. And God says, no, listen to the voice of your wife.
This is, it's really an ironic thing to say here in the book of Genesis, because previously, when he had listened to the voice of his wife in chapter 16, things had not gone well. And then in chapter three, Abraham, not Abraham, Adam had listened to the voice of his wife and things had not gone well. But here God says, no, your wife is correct.
And in those previous two circumstances, the voice of his wife had led him away from obedience to the Lord. But here Sarah is being a wise wife and she is reminding Abraham of the promises of God. And so she is steering him towards obedience.
And Abraham, God says, you would do well to listen, to heed the voice of your wife as she steers you towards remembering the promise. In verse 13, though, God doesn't leave Abraham hanging. He gives him another promise.
He says, I will make a nation of Ishmael also. And, and that promise is important to remember because Abraham is about to send Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. And this has perplexed readers and commentators for centuries.
It seems so cold. How could he send them away? But Abraham is sending them away, having the promise of God, that God will protect them and that God will make a nation of Ishmael. Abraham's not sending them away coldly or thoughtlessly or carelessly.
This isn't a small child. This isn't, you know, Hagar with an infant going out into the wilderness. It's a young man who's of an age where he can physically protect his mother.
And God has given a promise that he will make him a nation. And so he sends them away. We see that in verses 15 and following when the water in the skin was gone.
She put 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, let me not look on the death of the child.
And as 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? Fear not for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is up, lift up the boy and hold him fast to your hand. Hold him fast with your hand for I will make him into a great nation.
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy and he grew up and he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Perun and his mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt.
What are we supposed to learn from this? I'm going to assume for most of us, God's probably not calling us to send our children away, like get out of here. But I think there is, I think there's a lesson for us to learn is that sometimes when we are called to trust God, we are having to trust him to love our families more than we do. Trust the faithful God to love your family more than you do.
In Matthew chapter 10 verse 37, Jesus gives one of the most perplexing commands in all of, it's not even a command, it's just a statement of all the new Testament. Chapter 10 verse 37, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
This is literally what Abraham is being asked to do right here. He's having to choose, do I love God and the promises of God and obedience to God more or do I love my son more? Now Jesus uses the language there, who does not love father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. In other places where that same kind of teaching is given in the new Testament, it says, if you don't hate your father and mother, if you don't hate your son and daughter, and that language of hate isn't the way we think of hate, but it's comparative.
In comparison to how much you love God, other people are going to experience that as hatred. Hagar and Ishmael are not being hated by Abraham when they are sent away, but I bet they felt that way. I bet when they ran out of their skin of water and the angel of God had to open up Hagar's eyes because she's so dehydrated that she can't even see the well that's in front of her, they probably feel like Abraham hates them, like Abraham sent them out here to die.
One of the most important concepts historically in Christian theology is the idea of ordered loves. That is, you cannot rightly love anyone or anything if you have disordered the loves. I can't love my wife rightly if I put my love for her above my love for God.
I can't rightly love my neighbor if I put my love for them above my children or above God. We have to have the orders of our loves correct, and that starts with loving God and obedience to him first and foremost. But one of the things that scares us away from that is we are afraid of the emotional responses of other people when we put God first.
What if God commands you to do something that's going to displease those that you love? You think that could ever happen? What if you get saved and God calls you to leave the sins of your family? And maybe you've got a pattern with a certain group of friends or with your siblings or like we get together and get drunk on the weekends. And if you walk away from that, not because you hate them, but because you want to obey God, says that drunkenness is debauchery, you shouldn't do that. If you walk away from that, they're going to say, what's wrong with you? Do you think you're better than us? Do you think there's something wrong with us? Who do you think you are? Or you come to Christ and you realize I need to be baptized, identified with him as a believer.
Well, that can cause ripples. That can cause people to go, what was wrong with our previous religion, our previous traditions? What's this baptism as a symbol of new life in Christ? What is that? Are you rejecting us for us? And this is a little bit more subjective. Well, we felt pretty clearly God wanted us to move here.
A lot of family members took that as like a personal thing that we were abandoning them. That happens to people all the time. I've talked to numerous people who, for pastors who are trying to encourage people in their church to like engage in missions and move overseas, the number one barrier to that is their families, even their Christian families who want to say, well, but don't we matter more? Obedience to Christ and his call can be really costly.
But if what you're afraid of is, will he take care of my family? Will he do what's best for us? The answer is always yes. Now we have to be clear. Like if we feel like we're supposed to do something and it contradicts a clear command and duty in scripture, then what you're feeling is wrong.
Your feelings need to be ordered by the scriptures. But if you've got a command from God and it contradicts what those around you want, you have to follow God. Even if it costs you, even if it does offend and upset the people around you, and it's not hateful towards them to do that because truth and love always go together.
Truth and love are not separated from one another. They are not at war with one another. The feelings of those around us may be at times hurt when we choose to honor God with our decisions and with our lives.
But the most loving thing you can do for those that you love is to follow Christ as closely as you can. Do you trust that God will be faithful to you and to those that you love, even if it feels costly? One reason it can be hard for us to trust God is because we are often dealing with unfaithful people, and that's what we're going to see Abraham deals with here in the last part of the chapter. Verse 22, at that time Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do.
Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. So remember Abimelech is this man that Abraham had lied to, that Abraham had not dealt well with, but Abimelech had nonetheless obeyed God when God came to him in a dream and had given Sarah back and had blessed Abraham, given him all kinds of gifts and said, dwell wherever you want.
And then here Abimelech and his commander of his army are coming back to Abraham and saying, okay, make a deal with us, make a covenant with us, let's be friends. Abraham says, that's fair enough, let's do that. I always think of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, we'll be nice to them if they'll be nice to us.
I don't do a very good Gollum voice, I need to have Owen come up here and say that. Verse 25 though, it seems like Abimelech is actually going back on that. When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized, Abimelech said, I don't know who has done this thing, you did not tell me and I've not heard of it until today.
Well, Abraham's literally coming to him to tell him, he said, well, nobody told me about this. Oh, I'm telling you right now. We don't know for sure from the text, but it seems like Abimelech is okay with his servants doing this and is now just throwing up his hands and saying, hey, what are you talking about? What's the problem here? Abraham in verse 27 took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech and the two men made a covenant and Abraham said, seven ewe lambs of the flock apart and Abimelech said to Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you've set apart? He said, these seven ewe lambs, you will take from my hand that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well.
Therefore, the place was called Beersheba, which means well of seven or the well of an oath. And it may be a witness for me that I dug this well. Therefore, the name of the place was Beersheba because there both of them swore an oath.
So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. So Abimelech seems like he's kind of playing a little underhanded with Abraham here, but Abraham says here, before God, we are going to make a covenant.
You're going to take these seven ewe lambs from my hand. We're going to agree together before God and make this oath. And then here's what Abraham does in verse 33.
Abraham planted a Tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. And I think what we need to realize as we read these verses is that God is faithful, even when men are not, even when you're not quite sure how you can deal with people.
It's very easy to let negative experiences with other sinful human beings taint the way that we think about God. We take those betrayals that we've experienced, those times when other people have stabbed us in the back, and then we project those up to God. And we say, well, whether this is conscious or not, we stop trusting him the way that we should because we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We're just waiting for him to fail us like our mom failed us or like our husband failed us or like our kids failed us. We just wait for him to fail. God is not going to fail you.
Human relationships are characterized by distrust and failure. I was multiple times this week, had conversations with people of varying ages and just had to be honest, like, yep, that person has failed you and they probably are going to again. You don't need to have your head in the sand about that, but God will not fail you.
God will never fail you. Abraham seems to grasp this more and more after Isaac's birth. We're even here as he plants this tamarisk tree and calls on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
Brothers and sisters, we can, and we should, and we must trust the faithful God to keep his everlasting promises. So in this text, in this chapter, we see these three depictions of God's faithfulness. And my exhortation at the end of each of them has been this, to trust God.
But what does that mean specifically? What does it mean to trust God? Trusting God, trusting the faithful God means building your life on his word, the promises that he has written down for us and given to us. You must build your life on those things. In Luke chapter six, at the end of the sermon on the plane, Luke six, verses 46 to 49, Jesus says this, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like.
He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on ground without a foundation.
When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great. That's the only thing worth building your life on are the promises of God in scripture.
That's the only thing you can build your life on and hope that it will last. Back in Hebrews 11, looking at Abraham, the author says this beginning in verse 13, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, saw them because God promised them to them. And they, by faith apprehended, they were able to picture and believe what God had promised and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had an opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one.
