Move Out

Genesis 21:8-21
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, July 24, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

Genesis 21 records the distressing account of Hagar and Ishmael being sent off and at God’s direction.  There is no sugar-coating this event.  It was difficult and unpleasant for all involved.  It is a reminder that our sin not only makes a mess, but also that there are consequences for our sin, and that suffering is usually part of the deal.  Our sin affects us, but it also affects all around us.  Pastor Mathew puts it succinctly:  You must pay for your sin.

We will focus on several points this morning from this text, the first of which is the pain caused by our sin.

The Pain Caused by Our Sin

This should have been a time of great joy for Abraham and Sarah.  In the first seven verses of Genesis 21, we are told of the birth of Isaac.  Twenty-five years earlier, in Genesis 15, God had promised Abraham, “A son coming from your own body will be your heir.”  This was a great promise, and God promised to prosper that son and to prosper Abraham with so many offspring that they would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

The promise goes back farther than that.  When God called Abraham out of Ur and Haran in Genesis 12, God promised to make him into a great nation.  So that promise included offspring.  And, in a way, it goes back even further, to Genesis 3, when God gave the first promise of a Savior to fallen Adam.  So the birth of Isaac was a fulfillment of a deeply held and long-awaited desire:   a son and an heir, the child of the promise, which was no longer a promise to come but a promise fulfilled—the fulfillment of God’s best for His man Abraham and His woman Sarah.

By the beginning of Genesis 21, the boy was born.  In our text this morning, he had lived to the age of weaning.  It is a little unclear when that was, but he was at least two or three years old.  We would take that for granted, but his survival was not assured or as common as it is today.  We do not expect our small children to die today, but they did back then.  In fact, as recently as the Middle Ages (not very long ago from a historical perspective), infant mortality was thirty to fifty percent in the first year.  So one-third to one-half of all children died before they reached their first birthday.  Isaac had made it to the age of weaning.  This was a moment to celebrate.  In some cultures, it is still a time that is celebrated.  And they do so in our text.  They have a great feast to celebrate this version of a coming of age, or of surviving to a certain age.

It is a time of serious joy, a serious milestone, an accomplishment to be marked.  And yet lurking around this joyous event is a sort of a dark cloud:  the Ishmael problem.  Amidst all the celebrating and feasting over Abraham’s son, there is Ishmael in the middle of it.  Why all the fuss, after all?  Abraham already has a son.  Where was Ishmael’s feast?  Maybe they had it or maybe they didn’t, but it is not recorded.

And we get the sense from reading this that Ishmael and Hagar are sort of regarded as second-class citizens, as lower in rank in the family.  In fact, they are called “the slave woman and her son.”  It is a pretty derogatory description.  Even God calls them “the boy and your maidservant,” or the “son of the maidservant” in verse 13.   So even if not openly derogatory, as  Sarah was in calling them “the slave woman and her son,” they are implicitly lesser.  And by now Isaac is about fourteen years old—old enough to know something is amiss; old enough to know that somehow he is less and that somehow his mother is less, for some reason.

There is division in the family and not unity.  Half of the family is celebrating while half is resentful, it seems, and such resentment issues in action.  Ishmael mocks Isaac.  Now, some of that is just a part of being a block-headed fourteen-year-old boy.  But some of it is surely born of resentment.  Why is this kid so special?  Ishmael knows that Isaac is considered the “real” son, while he is not, and seemingly by no fault of his own.  What did Ishmael do?  He is fourteen and likely by this point an able young man.  Remember, he is the son of a great man, Abraham, a great man of great prowess.  Ishmael himself likely had genetic prowess.  Later, we will learn that he lived in the desert and became an archer.  He became a great man from an earthly perspective later on.  So Ishmael seems to be somewhat accomplished, and yet here we are celebrating the little baby who can finally eat the solid foods.  Why must we fawn over the little golden boy Isaac just because he can eat solids?  What kind of an accomplishment is that?

Sarah is likely also jealous for her own son Isaac and concerned about Isaac’s prominent position, and so she seems to overreact to a little mocking from a fourteen-year-old.  Verse 10:  “Kick him out, that slave woman’s son! He will never share in the inheritance of my son.  Get rid of him!” If you think about it, it is quite harsh and a little bit callous.

So why all this strife?  Why all this division on what should be a great and joyous day, a happy occasion for the whole family?  It is the result of sin.  Sin always causes pain and trouble.  Sin is never worth it.

This particular problem is a long-term dividend of the sin of Sarai and Abram in developing the Hagar solution (Gen. 16).  You will recall a few chapters ago that God promised a son early on, and yet they got tired of waiting.  They waited around for ten years or so.  They got tired of waiting, so Sarai sends Abram into the tent with Hagar the maidservant to have a son.  God permitted this to occur, but it was not His good, perfect, and pleasing will.  They did not ask God  but instead leaned on their own understanding.

There was the immediate mess where Hagar becomes pregnant and begins to despise her mistress Sarai in Genesis 16.  Sarai responds by mistreating Hagar later in that chapter, Hagar runs away, and God had to intervene to clean up the mess.  Those were the immediate consequences, but we should note that the immediate consequences of our sin are rarely the only consequences of our sin.  Usually, sin pays an ongoing dividend, often a lifelong dividend, even to the third and fourth generation.  We preached some time ago about the hundred-year curse, how our sin echoes in our children and echoes in their children.  We will see in a few weeks in Genesis 26 that Isaac will copy Abram in lying to Abimelech, saying that his wife is his sister.  This dividend effect of sin is surely the case here in our text this morning, and everyone gets a piece of the dividend.

There was, of course, pain for little Isaac.  He was mocked and mistreated by his older brother, and he would grow up in life not really knowing that older brother.  He certainly was not living with Ishmael and not close with him.  So not only does he suffer the temporary indignity of being mocked, but he loses that relationship that he ought to have with an older brother.  Sin robs us of our relationships.

There was suffering for Sarah as well.  Her precious son Isaac was mocked, and  her great feast day was, in a way, ruined by Ishmael.  She had a rival half-wife living in the home.  There  was no rest, no peace in that situation.  She had Ishmael walking around as a constant reminder of her barrenness for the first ten years, and later on as a reminder that her husband had fathered a child with another woman.  And you can say it was her fault, but that does not make it any easier to deal with.  And, of course, she had the nagging knowledge that all this misery, all this suffering, was a result of her bad idea and her bad plan.  There is an element of shame to go along with all that.

Additionally, Sarah had great fear—great fear for Isaac, great fear for his position, great fear of Ishmael and Hagar and the threat that they presented.  We can hear it in verse 10:  “That slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance of my son Isaac.”  So this was probably the expression of a very deeply held fear from which she could never have peace.

Sarah’s fear was not without a rational basis.  Surely she knew how Cain murdered Abel in jealousy (Gen. 4).  She saw the strife and the trouble between Lot and Abraham—a different scenario, but two prominent men living together in a household that was not big enough for both of them (Gen. 13).  Later on, we will see how jealous Esau plotted to kill deceiving Jacob (Gen. 27).  And, of course, the squabbling between rival wives, Leah and Rachel.  It hadn’t happened yet, but it shows us that her fears were not unfounded.  And later on we will see how Jacob’s children threw their half-brother Joseph down a well and sold him into slavery out of jealousy.  Those who are close to us have the greatest capacity to harm us.  So with the Ishmael threat out there, Sarah could never really rest or have peace.  Sin robs us of our peace.

There was also suffering for Hagar.  She was mistreated and slandered as a slave woman.  This is a partial truth.  It seems that they purchased or acquired her down in Egypt, so probably she was acquired as a slave.  But that is not an accurate description of her position in this household.  Yet she is put down as a slave woman, as a nothing.  She was debased and despised, not treated as a wife as she had probably assumed that she would be, or may even have been told in Genesis 16:3.   And she was trapped in this situation with no way out.  Her son was regarded as lower class or some kind of interloper.  She was rejected, she was alone, she was exposed to abuse, and she had no husband to protect her.

And though Abraham seems to have had an affinity for Ishmael—we see that in Genesis 17 and we see it also here in our text, that Abraham had an affinity for Ishmael—we are not told of any affinity that he had for Hagar.  Their relationship appears to consist of carrying Abraham’s child and that was it.  She is not treated as a wife.  She does not even seem to be regarded as the mother of his son.  That does not mean he gave her nothing.  It seems clear that he provided food and clothing, and probably a lot more than that for them.  But it  was not a dignified position.  In fact, it seems to be quite undignified and probably shame-inducing.  But there she is.  Where can she go?  She is stuck, with nowhere to go and no one to help her.  So this must have been a frustrating and difficult way to live.

Of course, there was also suffering for Ishmael—rejected by his father for no particular action of his.  The son of what seems to be a somewhat disgraced woman, although it was hard to see what she did wrong.  He appears to be hated by the powerful woman of the house, Sarah.  He seems to be a young man without a real place in the family, without a clear position in the family.  Not quite regarded as a son of Abraham—a real son—but then again not quite one of the guys either.  Remember, this is a large household with many men, many women, and many children.  So he is not quite just a regular guy, but he is not also quite a real son of Abraham.  It is a halfway position to live in.  So it is difficult for Ishmael.

Naturally, there was pain for Abraham as well.  You see, Abraham loved and cared for his son Ishmael.  In fact, you will recall back in Genesis 17, when God reconfirms and expands on the promise to come, the promised son Isaac, Abraham counters, “If only Ishmael might live under Your blessing!” So he loves Ishmael.  He is looking out for Ishmael’s good.  Here in Genesis 21:11, we are told, “The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son.”  And notice that when God tells Abraham not to be worried about it, He actually says, “Do not be so distressed about the boy.”  I did not study the Hebrew grammar, but it appears that God even understands that there is to be some distress in Abraham over the matter of his son.  He loves this son.  It is difficult for him to see his son treated in this way, and to treat his son in this way.

On top of that, Abraham’s two sons do not seem to get along.  The two mothers of his two sons had an apparent deep and bitter enmity and were living in his house in the midst of this bitterness and enmity.  It was not a fun way to live.  He is unable to enjoy God’s blessing in peace because of this lingering problem.

Well, they tried to move past it all.  They had tried to put it behind them and carry on as if everything was fine and everything was normal and everything was okay.  For fourteen or so years—between the time that Hagar returns in Genesis 16 to the time when Isaac is born and weaned in Genesis 21—for those fourteen or so years they muddled on through as a regular family.  We are not told of a lot of problems.  We can assume there were problems, but we are not told of any major incidents in that time.  So they muddled on through.  They tried to put it behind them.  They tried  to carry on as though everything was fine.

But everything was not fine.  Sin’s consequences are not so easily avoided.  Eventually, there had to be a split.  Two cannot walk together unless there is agreement.  The son of the promise cannot co-exist with unregenerate Ishmael in the house.  So they suffered in their time—all those people that I mentioned suffered in that household.  Old Testament Israel would suffer—the kingdoms of Ishmael’s descendants lived in hostility to Isaac’s descendants.  Genesis 25:18 says so.  And we suffer even today in the ongoing conflicts and enmity between Isaac and Ishmael’s descendants.

As Pastor Mathew often underscores for us:  You must pay for your sins.  Pastor would say that the proverbial Mack truck would come to deliver the consequences of your long-past sins, and you will try to refuse delivery.  But you must take delivery.  You see, we forget about our sin.  We cover over our sin.  We try to hide from our sin.  But God remembers our sin.  We live in a moral universe, and our sins have consequences.  When we sin, either by breaking God’s express law or simply by doing our own thing instead of keeping His will, we suffer and we pay a price.

So here is the first application for us this morning:  Don’t sin.  It is simply not worth it.  You will make a mess, both because sin does not work and because God will never bless your sin solution.  Indeed, if we take time to examine our challenges, our troubles, our problems in life, we will find out that most of those are a result of our sinful solutions to other perceived problems.  When we see a problem and we don’t want to deal with it in the right way because it is too hard, we find a shortcut and we multiply problems for ourselves.

Our attempts to shortcut our way around challenges rather than waiting on the Lord or our desire for something that God said is not for us to have:  that approach always results in difficulty.  It always results in more trouble.  Our improper love or lust for something, such that it becomes an idol and that we begin to serve it rather than God, always makes a mess.  It is true in the church, and it is true in the world.  Our own approach is a bad approach.

In the 1950s, eighty percent of U.S. households consisted of married couples.  All of those people were not Christians, obviously, but they were living  in conformity to God’s directive order, at least in that part of their life.  But today that figure is below fifty percent.  Forty-nine percent of U.S. households are led by married couples.  Forty percent of births are to unmarried mothers.  Now, many of the feminists and counter-cultural movement people in the 1960s and even today considered traditional marriage as some sort of form of slavery.  You see it in the slogans of the time.  They would deride the 1950s housewives, the June Cleavers of their time, as sub-human.  They would reject Christian values and promote a sexual revolution and many “alternative lifestyles.”  So ask yourself:  Are any of those people better off today than they were back then?  Are single mothers happier and blessed and more fulfilled than those 1950s housewives they look down upon?  Do they “have it all,” as they imagined that they would?  Are their children better off?  Social science statistics tell us that children who grow up without a father in the home are poorer, sicker, less educated, and more likely to end up in jail.

Are men better off, floating along in extended adolescence and purposelessness into their late twenties, thirties, forties, and even for their whole life?  Is society better off in coming up with our own solution and doing things in our own way?  The answer is no.  Now, we don’t have concubines and maidservants bearing children in our culture, but we have the analogous thing.  We have divorce, absentee fathers, and irresponsibility, and we have it on a much, much larger scale.  Our way does not work.  God’s way works.

Even among believers, sin is not a cost-free exercise.  Now, we can fool ourselves into thinking that it is.  After all, we say, our sin is covered in the blood of Christ, and that is true.  Our eternal punishment is satisfied in the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is true.  But there are still consequences for sin in this life.  As here, those consequences come to us, the person who sinned; come to our family, those who are closest to us; come to our church; and come for future generations.  Your refusal to submit to your husband as God commands echoes in your disobedient children, or even in your daughter’s marriage problems.  Your passivity as a husband—you are supposed to lead—your passivity is passed down to your son and to his.  Your failure to work deprives your children and their children of opportunities, a generational setback.  And we could give many more examples.  But the point is, don’t do it.  Don’t sin.  Don’t make a mess of suffering for yourself and everyone else.

Instead, live according to God’s way and live according to God’s timeline and be blessed.  And then be a blessing to others.  You see, living in disobedience to God has generational consequences, but living in obedience to God has generational consequences too—good consequences.  Brothers and sisters, any time we are tempted to sin, we must consider our future—our children, our wives, our grandchildren, our friends, our brothers and sisters in the Lord—and then stop sinning.  So that is the pain caused by sin.

God’s Justice

Perhaps as you read this passage of Ishmael being sent away you begin to think that it is pretty harsh for God to send Hagar and Ishmael away.  I want to dissuade you from such misunderstanding.  It is not harsh.  In fact, it was just.

The first thing we have to do is get rid of the idea that this was Sarah’s doing; sort of a way to avoid the problem.  God would not be that harsh, but that mean old Sarah is.  No, Sarah is a godly person.  It was God who sent Hagar and Ishmael away.  Unlike the Hagar solution, this decision has God’s imprimatur, has God’s stamp on it.  We read that in verses 11 and 12.  It was God’s will that they be sent away and so it was for everyone’s good.  God always works all things together for the good of those who love him.

Second, recall that God owes us nothing except for His wrath.  God created and sustained every one of us (Heb. 1:3).  He gives us food and sustenance by his common grace.  He doesn’t owe us that.  God offers us all salvation in Jesus Christ (John 3:16; Rom. 10:9).  He doesn’t owe us that.  It is amazing that God has done anything for us, much less everything for us.  We were created very good, and we had every provision for mankind.  And yet we rebelled against God, we violated His laws, and we rejected Him.  Many of us denied His very existence.  It is the highest form of rejection—not that God is bad, but that God is irrelevant, God does not exist.

Due to our sin, we were dead spiritually, and we owed an infinite penalty to be suffered in an infinite hell.  We were without hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12).  It is a description of every person ever born.   We were unable to pay that penalty that we owed.  As finite beings, we could not pay the infinite penalty.  So we were in deep, deep, deep eternal trouble.  And then, in that time, God moved.  In His great love, He sent His Son, very God, Jesus Christ, to become man, to live a perfect life for us in perfect obedience to God to suffer all the wrath that was due to us on the cross and then to die the death that we deserve.  (GTB)  Substitutionary atonement.  You see, He was able to pay the penalty.  We are finite so we could not pay it.  But as infinite God, He could pay the infinite debt, and He did so in our behalf.  Then He rose from the grave, for death could not keep a hold on Him because He never sinned.  God owes us nothing, and yet He offers us everything.  Any time you begin to think that something has happened to you is unfair, stop and ask, “Unfair compared to what?”  If you understand what we all truly deserve as rebels, as sinners, then you will never ask to be treated fairly.  “Fairly” means we all go to hell.  Instead of that, you will plead for God’s mercy, His rich mercy that He freely gives due to His great love.

Here He certainly owed no obligation to Hagar nor to Ishmael.  We are not told that God said, “Pick up yourself a maidservant in Egypt,” but they did so.  God did not say, “Go in her tent and lay with her and have a son.”  Sarai and Hagar and Abram cooked all this up on their own.  So God could have simply blinked them out of existence and that would have been perfectly fair.  “I did not intend this; I will put a stop to it.”  It would have been perfectly fair for God to do so.  God could have said, “Not part of my plan.”  But He did not do that.

So whenever we begin to think that things are unfair, we must re-examine and we must remember our bedrock principle:   All God’s ways are right (Ps. 145:17).  Usually, when we think of something as unfair, particularly in reference to God, it is because we are comparing God to our twisted standard, instead of thinking, “God is the standard and I must conform to that.”  We must conform all our ways and all our thinking to him (Rom. 12:2).  If you ever begin to accuse or doubt God’s goodness in your thinking, then think again.  You are most likely operating from a wrong premise.

The third reason why this is just is that Hagar and Ishmael sinned.  When she became pregnant, Hagar despised Sarai.  She sinned.  Ishmael mocked Isaac, the son of God’s promise.  We know those are two specific sins they committed, but we can extrapolate from there.  We can infer that they knew God’s word via Abraham, the man of God.  After all, Ishmael at least lived with Abraham, close to his household, for fourteen years.  Hagar knew for even longer than that.  So they saw all kinds of God’s works.  Surely, Abraham talked about God.  Whenever you see Abraham doing anything, it is all God-centered, God-driven.  We can imagine his speech was full of God every day.

Hagar at least, and likely Ishmael, saw all kinds of God’s works:  the covenant of circumcision that God came and made; the three visitors who came before Sodom was destroyed; the destruction of Sodom; and the birth of Isaac.  These are all things they would have been around for and they would have heard about and they would have likely witnessed with their own eyes.  And yet when they were sent out, they appeared to go rather willingly.  They did not say, like the godly Ruth, “Where you go I will go, for your God will be my God.”  They do not plead to stay like the disciples.  When Jesus said, “Do you want to go too?” what was their response?  “To whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  So they could have said the same thing to Abraham: “Don’t send us away.  Let us stay here with you and worship the true and living God.”  But there is no record that they believed in Abraham’s God or trusted in His promised Messiah.

The fourth reason it is just: God’s salvation plan required it.  Isaac was the promised son, the line through whom the Messiah would come.  We are told that in verse 12 of our text.  It is through Isaac that they would be reckoned.  Ishmael presented a legitimate threat to that, as I mentioned before.  We saw the Cain example, the Esau example, the example of Joseph’s brothers.  Had Ishmael stayed, it is likely that enmity would have increased and that trouble would have increased between the two of them.  It is a short walk from mocking to hating to attacking to murder, as happened in the case of Cain.

So God who knows all things sent them off at the right time, avoiding any threat to Isaac and eliminating any confusion over who was the promised son and heir.  God has His reasons for doing things.  We don’t always understand God’s reasons, but we know that God has His reasons and they are for our good and the good of all His people. 

God’s Mercy

God was not merely just in sending off Hagar and Ishmael, but He was also merciful.  First, God comes and gives assurances to distressed Abraham.  Verse 13:  “I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also because he is your offspring.”  In other words, God is saying, “You are my friend, and I will take care of your son.”

Second, God heard Ishmael’s cry (v. 17).  God has no obligation to hear anyone’s cry, and yet he hears.  He does not ignore the cry of the boy or the sobbing of Hagar.  He does not answer harshly.  You can imagine, “Oh, where is all your mocking now, Ishmael?  You were mocking just yesterday.  Where is all your mocking now?  You are crying like a little baby now.”  No, God doesn’t do that.  Instead, He answers (v. 17).  He answers gently, and He answers lovingly, and He answers mercifully.  He says, “What is the matter, Hagar?”  God had appeared to Hagar twice via His angels—once when she ran away before, and now this time, when she was sent off.  Even that is mercy.  That is great mercy.  It is two more than me, and one more than most.  So here God appears to her through His angel and comforts her with His presence.

Fourth, God comforts her with His words.  Verse 18:  “Do not be afraid.”  Now, when you hear “Do not be afraid” from God, you can be very comforted.  Everything will be all right.  “Do not be afraid,” He says.  “God has heard the boy crying.  I will make him into a great nation.”  And notice, God is putting His guarantee behind it.  It is not, “He will become a great nation.”  It is not merely a predictive thing that God is engaging in here.  No, God is taking on the responsibility.  “I will make him into a great nation.  You can take it to the bank.  I will take care of it.”  God is gentle, merciful, and abundant in His comfort to Hagar.  And He reaffirms the promise that He made back in Genesis 16 to increase Hagar’s descendants.

Fifth, God provides for her.  In earlier chapters, Hagar had called God “the God who sees me.”  But we know from our teaching that “sees” does not mean God merely observes, that light refracts off His eyes and He sees what is going on.  No, He sees to help.  He sees to provide.  Here He opens her eyes, and He leads her to water in the desert, the vital need of the moment.  So they drink the water and they live, and later we are told God was with Ishmael to bless him in this life.  In verse 20, he goes and lives in the desert.  He becomes an archer.  He gets a wife.  He has children, and twelve of his children become great rulers of tribes and nations.

God fulfilled for Ishmael what God had promised to Hagar in Genesis 16, and promised to Abraham in Genesis 17, especially this promise that Ishmael would have twelve sons who would become rulers (Gen. 25:12–18).  Ishmael became a father of many tribes and a great nation.  He is not part of the covenant.  That is not for him.  God says, “My covenant will be with Isaac and his offspring” (Gen. 17:19).  But God still acts in great mercy with Ishmael and his mother who otherwise would have died a rather miserable death in the desert—died of thirst or died of hunger or both.

God is not only just but He is also very rich in mercy.  And if we think that He was merciful to them, He is even more merciful to us.  Earthly blessing is good, but covenant love and salvation in Christ is better.  Opening your eyes to see a spring  of water in the desert is great mercy.  But opening your eyes to see the water of life, to see eternal life in Jesus Christ, is even better.  Today—this day—God’s offer of salvation is still available to all.  He is still opening the eyes of all to the vital need of the moment: forgiveness  of sin, salvation in Christ by faith.  And now we proclaim it to the whole world because He said to do so (Matt. 28).  You see, it is not just to Isaac and to his descendants, but it is to all.  The command we have is to go into all the world and preach the word to all, making them disciples and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey whatsoever things God has commanded.

We are to go and preach it to all, and then the amazing part—anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Any tribe, any nation, even those descendants of Ishmael; Jew or Muslim or Greek; slave or free; black or white; rich or poor—salvation is available to all by grace.  God is indeed merciful.

Abraham’s Great Faith

The other remarkable thing that stands out in this passage is Abraham’s great faith.  As I mentioned before, he loved Ishmael.  In fact, he named Ishmael, which means “God will hear” (Gen. 16:15).  And God heard.  Before Isaac was born, he pleaded with God on Ishmael’s behalf:  “May Ishmael live under your blessing!” Abraham circumcised Ishmael in Genesis 17:23 as part of the family and household.

Abraham raised Ishmael in his own household—maybe not quite as the prominent son that he would have liked to have been, but at least he did not send him off into the desert early on.  At least he did not say, “Go live with your Uncle Lot in Sodom.”  No, Abraham raised him in his own household.  And notice that others may refer to Ishmael as “the slave woman’s son” or as “the son of the maidservant,” but you never see Abraham doing that.  Abraham refers to him as Ishmael.  And, of course, Abraham was distressed both at the strife and at the prospect of sending Ishmael off.  And it tells us the reason he was distressed.  It says, “because it concerned his son” (Gen. 21:11).  So there is every indication that Abraham acknowledged Ishmael as a son, and that Abraham loved  him as a son.  And it appears later—it is not expressed, but it appears later—that Abraham gave gifts to Ishmael, among others (Gen. 25:6).  Indeed, two sons of Abraham came to bury him when he died—Isaac and Ishmael (Gen. 25:9).  So maybe they kept in contact or at least somehow Ishmael was informed that Abraham had died.  But they are the only two mentioned there that they came.

So Abraham loves him.  Ishmael has a special place in the heart of Abraham.  And yet, despite all that love, despite all that acknowledgment, despite his relationship with Ishmael, he sends Ishmael away at God’s word.  And he does so immediately.  Genesis 21:14 says, “Early the next morning.”  He does so fully.  It is not a compromised position:  “Well, go put your tent fifty yards that way and you will be sent off.”  Or, “Go live with Uncle Lot with Zoar.  I did not send you there before, but now you can live with Uncle Lot.”  No, he sent them away.  Genesis 21:14 says, “He sent Hagar off with the boy.”  There is sort of a finality to the matter, when you read it.

He gives only a skin of water and some food (Gen. 21:14).  I don’t know how much water goes in a skin and I don’t know how much food is “some,” but it is not very much.  It was enough to fit on her shoulders, but it is not a lifetime supply.  He did not pay ongoing child support to Hagar and Ishmael for the rest of their lives.  It seems to be a clean and clear break because that is what God had directed.

So how do we reconcile this?  How do we reconcile Abraham’s love, on the one hand, for his son who is fourteen—how do we reconcile his distress with his immediate sending of Ishmael?  There is no three-month mourning period.  He did it early the next day.  Did Abraham have a change of heart about Ishmael?  Was his love for the boy so shallow that he could just send him off uncaringly?  No.  The answer is that Abraham had great faith.  He had deep and firm understanding of God, developed on his way from Ur, developed down in Egypt, developed in God’s promised land.

You see, Abraham had learned by error, by theophany, by rescue, by the judgment on Sodom, and by the twenty-five year wait for Isaac, the son of promise.  He had learned about God, and he had learned this God delivers.  This God always delivers.  He is faithful and trustworthy.  He is good, and His love endures forever.  You don’t have to doubt Him.  He is going to do what He said, and He is going to take care of it.

So Abraham could readily obey because he had nothing to worry about.  Remember in Genesis 17, when Abraham says, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” God’s answer is, “As for Ishmael, I will surely bless him.  I will make him into a great nation,” because of Abraham.  And God promised it again on that feast day.  When He said, “Send the boy off,” God also said, “I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also because he is your offspring.”  So Abraham could have 100% assurance that everything would be alright for Ishmael.  He is not going to die in the desert.  He does not need loads of donkeys and servants to go with him and take tons of food and tons of water.  God said he will take care of him.  Abraham knew with certainty through his experience in life that God would do what God had promised for Ishmael.  It is in His very character, in His very nature, to do what He promises.

So the old way, the old Abraham way of sort of hedging your bets, of sort of helping God out by heading down to Egypt in the time of famine or sleeping with the maidservant to get that son or lying to Abimelech in fear—that old way is over.  Abraham has been progressively sanctified.  He has greater and greater faith.  He was a great man of great faith before, but his great faith has grown to even higher heights.  He has been greatly sanctified by this stage in life.  He is more than 100 years old.  He has had many years of walking with God.  So he understood:  God will take care of it.  God will do what He said.  There is no reason to delay, no reason to fear, no reason to distress.  God said it, I can believe it, and I can move forward in faith.

This was a huge test to send off a son that you love, but Abraham passed with flying colors.  He will do so again in Genesis 22 when he is tested about Isaac.  Abraham had always believed God.  In Genesis 12:4, 15:6, and 17:23, his belief, his faith in God, is emphasized.  He is very orthodox in his belief.  But he reached a new height in his actions, proving his faith by his deeds—immediate, uncompromising, and unreserved obedience to God.  You see, “I can do that because I can trust God to do what He said.  I don’t have to worry.  I don’t have to take care of it myself.  I can trust God.  He will do it.”

The application for us:  Let us do the same.  We have as much and perhaps more reason for confidence than the godly Abraham.  Abraham waited twenty-five years or so for a promised son, and God delivered.  We waited thousands and thousands of years for a promised Messiah, from Genesis 3 to the coming of Christ, and He delivered that Son too.  Not just a son, but the Son, the Son of God, God-become-man, God paying our ransom and suffering the wrath that we deserved.  God delivered us from all our sin by Christ and raised Him for our justification.  And to show us that Jesus paid it all, to show us that it works, to show us that it was effective.  So we are redeemed.  We are saved today, saved tomorrow, saved eternally by the precious blood of Christ.

Now, use your brains:  Having done all this for us, will God not take care of us?  Having done all this for us, what do we have to worry about in this life?  Why would we ever do anything but determine God’s will to the best of our ability and do it, carry it out, obey it?  How could we ever doubt the good outcome that He promises in all things (Rom. 8:28)?  As Paul reminds us in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”  God will take care of you.  We must trust and obey such a God as this.

Now, that does not mean that the fear won’t come, that the distress won’t come.  The fear comes and the distress comes.  “How can I submit to my husband?”  you might say.  “He is not so smart.”  Or, “Gee, I really feel strongly about this.  I don’t mind submitting when it is not that important, but I really feel strongly about this.  I am really worried about this.”  Those thoughts will come.  But do it, because God is the one who says to do it (Eph. 5:24).  Do it, because God promises to work all things for your good, including that.  “How can I govern my family and love my wife as Christ loved the church?  It is too hard.  It is too high a calling.  I must aim lower.  I may fail if I try to do that.”  And in the flesh you will fail, if you try to do that.  But you should try to do it anyway.  Do it because God commands it (Eph. 5:25).  Do it because God will bless you and help you to do it as you go about obeying Him.  Children, you may say, “How can I obey my parents in the Lord?”   (Eph. 6:1).  Employees, you may say, “How can I obey my boss with respect and sincerity?”  (Eph. 6:5).  You might say, “I can obey my boss.  But with respect and sincerity?  That’s difficult to do.”  But that is God’s command.  “How can I say ‘No’ to sin, that besetting sin, that tempting sin—how can I say ‘No’ to sin and ‘Yes’ to righteousness, as God commands in Titus 2:12?”  “How can I accept this lower position when I think I am due a high position, or this high position when I would rather have the lower position?  It is too high of a calling,” you might say.

Well, the question is not how can we do it.  How is easy.  You can do it; God will help you.  The question is whether you will do it—whether you will trust in God, trust and obey our trustworthy God and go in faith obeying his commands, whether you will submit to God and resist the devil.  Oh, the devil can defeat me.  It is no problem for him.  The devil can defeat you too.  Happily, he does not war against you and against me.  He wars against God.  And he cannot defeat God and he cannot defeat us when God is with us.  So you can submit to God and resist the devil.  Don’t worry about how.  God will take care of the how.  Let us do our part and leave the rest to God.

I want to close saying:  Let us be like Abraham.  Let us show great faith like Abraham.  We are Abraham’s children by faith.  Let us live like Abraham’s children.  Let us obey God immediately and exactly.  Let us not make a mess with our sin but be blessed by our obedience.  And let us then stand amazed at all that God does and has done and let us give Him all the praise.  Amen.