I have come to the inevitable conclusion that the Lord is using my desire to teach about this subject to teach me the fullness of the bible that I never absorbed on my own. I know this because at first glance of today’s verse my initial thought was “Oh, how disappointing, this one is so short it lacks depth”. Then I started to unpack how we got there, and man, it gets nuts.
So today’s verse is Genesis 21:17-18, here it is from the ASV (My chosen version. I don’t know why, God told me to use it):
”17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. 18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thy hand; for I will make him a great nation.”
On the surface of it, this is a very straightforward story of a child crying under a bush, and telling his mother not to be afraid, for God will take care of the child. In and of itself, this is still quite satisfying, as who hasn’t felt unsteady and uncertain with a new child coming into this world? To hear the voice of Yaweh telling you that it will be ok, and that your child will lead a great nation must be the most amazing comfort in the world.
The problem is, it’s not actually that simple, or at least not ONLY that simple. Because the climax of the story isn’t that the child is under the bush. The climax of the story leads all the way back to Genesis 15 that we talked about last time where Yaweh told Abram that his descendants would number as the stars. Of course this means that Abram at some point, does need to have a child, but the timing belongs to Yaweh, since it was his promise that the event would occur. All Abram and Sarah have to do here is nothing, but as all of human history since the Fall has pointed out, we are REALLY bad at just doing nothing. So Sarah decides to take control of the situation and it end’s badly.
Genesis 16 1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bare him no children: and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, Jehovah hath restrained me from bearing; go in, I pray thee, unto my handmaid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
Sarah loses faith in Yaweh’s promise to have descendants that outnumber the stars. So since she has yet to bear Abram a child, she sends Abram to sleep with her servant Hagar, who then bears a son, Ishmael. Of course, in the manner of all women, once faced with the reality of what she had done, she felt loathing and enmity towards Hagar and the child. So she sends them away into the wilderness. An Angel of the Lord finds Hagar and the child near a spring, and tells Hagar to return to Sarah and to be meek, and she will be forgiven. The angel also tells Hagar that Yaweh will make Ishmael a wild donkey of a man and have him lead a great nation that will cause conflict with all around him.
Now, this is all in Genesis 16, and the fear verse isn’t till Genesis 21. To lead you there through 4 chapters of Genesis would probably take an entire chapter of a book, considering how much happens (including Sodom and Gomorra).So we are just going to hit the high points in my own words. Read it yourself for full flavor, and remember that Genesis is the story of God walking bodily with his children. It’s second only to the Christ story in terms of amazingness.
So Hagar has the child unto Abram, and life suddenly gets harder for Israel. God curses several families associated with Sarah to be childless until they pray for healing and forgiveness. Sarah becomes elderly and goes through Menopause (they don’t call it that, but she does). Abram reaches the age of 100, and still they don’t have a child. In fact, Abram falls down laughing at the Lord when told he will Father a child in his old age with Sarah. Like literally. He has the guts to LAUGH in the face of God. Just in case you thought you were brave. Then in Genesis 21, God comes to Sarah, and she has a child. At the age of 96.
Abram, in the manner of all men, tries to both keep the fruits of Yaweh’s blessing (Isaac) as well as the fruits of Sarah’s lack of faith, and of his sin (Ishmael). However, the Lord tells Abram that Isaac will bear Abram’s inheritance, to be faithful to the word of Yaweh as he had promised, but that he shouldn’t be upset because BOTH sons would lead great nations. So Abram rises and sends Hagar on her way with a wineskin of water and the child. Which is how Yaweh hears Ishmael crying in the wilderness at the start of this post, and walks physically with the boy as he is raised to be a great archer in the desert.
The narrative on this story is very long, and I barely opened it up. To do it justice would require an entire book, and I have neither the skill, nor the audience to be worth the effort right now. So this is barely touching the high points. I’d love to visit it further if anyone ever desires to hear more.
However, the lessons from this story are ones that I have lived in my own life, so as I started to write, I felt immediate kinship with what was happening, since this story like the original story of Adam and Eve really illustrates the human failing once again. Our failure is lack of faith combined with fear. Sarah and Abram were promised children more numerous than the stars by God himself. All they had to do was nothing, and it would have happened.
Instead, Sarah believed herself wiser than God, and she plotted to make it happen on her own terms. The consequences of her actions breed strife into a marriage, pain and frustration into her husband, misery into the life of a child, and breeds an entire nation that will stand opposed to Israel for the rest of time. God didn’t will the Ishmaelites into existence. It wasn’t his will that the two lineages of Abraham should fight, but since Sarah’s sin brought them into existence, he blessed the innocent child, and used the fruit of sin to teach a lesson to his children. Isn’t that always how it works in real life?
God didn’t will my porn addiction to happen. It happened because I was weak and I allowed myself to be seduced by images I liked seeing on the screen as a young teen. I could have prayed for strength and turned my sin into the hands of Yaweh, but I didn’t. I kept it close to my breast like an adder coiled around my heart. I nurtured that deep and abiding sin and let it fester and rot. I let it infect and affect my marriage, and I bear the sin of not trusting in God to deliver to me what he had promised. Yet also, once I was able to stand up and set it free, when I turned that sin over to God to handle, He has made the fruits of it serve me as a lesson to make me a better person. Once I faced that fear, I was rewarded and made infinitely stronger for it.
So trust in the Lord and be not afraid. All things are made to serve Him in one way or another. Whether you are Sarah, bearing the fruit of your sin, or whether you are Ishmael crying under a bush in the wilderness, you too can serve the Lord if only you turn to him.
God bless you all my brothers and sisters. Walk with Christ boldly today.