The Birth of Ishmael - Genesis Part 35

Well, the Arab people, you know, until about a hundred years ago, most of the world basically ignored them.

But not anymore. Folks, there are 300 million Arab people living in 19 countries across North Africa and the Middle East. And because of their enormous oil wealth, they hold the economy of the world in their hand. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Arab extremism is a force that all of us on this globe are forced to deal with every day.

And the Arab-Israeli conflict is now at the fulcrum of world politics. So who are these people? And where did they come from?

And how did they get here? Well, this is what we're going to talk about today as we resume our chapter-by-chapter study of the book of Genesis. We're going to be studying chapter 16 where God tells us where the Arab people came from and where he also gives us some very practical instruction for our own personal spiritual lives. So, are you ready? Okay, here we go.

A little bit of review. Remember in Genesis chapter 12, God asked Abraham to leave his country, leave his land, leave his parents, leave his relatives, leave his job, leave his friends, and come follow God to the promised land. And Abraham did that. And God told him that as a result, he would have a son. And through that son, a multitude of descendants to whom God would give as an eternal possession the land of Canaan. Ten years later, in Genesis chapter 15, God repeated this promise of a son to Abraham. Verse 4, God said to Abraham, a son who comes forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. But here we are in Genesis 16 and we don't have a son. And so Sarah and Abraham begin to become impatient and they decide to make a fateful decision to take matters into their own hands. And that's where we pick up the story. Genesis chapter 16, verse 1.

Here we go. Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children. And we must understand in the ancient Near East, barrenness was the ultimate disgrace for a woman. Sarah was now 75 years old. She was desperate to remove this stigma.

And so, as we said a moment ago, she decided to take matters into her own hands. You say, how do you do that? Well, let me tell you, if you've been tracking with us in the book of Genesis, you've heard me mention the city of Newsy. It was a city that was flourishing at the time of Abraham and Sarah. And there in Newsy, we have found thousands of clay tablets elucidating for us the everyday customs that existed in the time of Abraham and Sarah. And there's one very curious custom that we found there. It's kind of a surrogate motherhood.

And here's how it works. If a woman, a wife, was barren, she was permitted to give one of her handmaidens to her husband as a surrogate mother. The husband would sleep with this handmaiden, and when the handmaiden bore a child, that child was considered to be the child of the barren wife, thereby removing her stigma of barrenness. Now, we see this very custom at work elsewhere in the book of Genesis when it comes to Jacob and Rachel. Chapter 30 of Genesis, verse 1, when Rachel saw that she wasn't bearing Jacob any children, then she said to him, here is Bilhah, my handmaiden, sleep with her so that she may bear children for me and that through her I can build a family. And this is exactly what Sarah does here in Genesis 16.

Back to verse 1. Now Sarah had an Egyptian handmaiden named Hagar. So she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my handmaiden.

Perhaps I can build a family through her. Now friends, we need to be perfectly clear here, and this is really important, that what Sarah was proposing here in Genesis 16 was not illegal, it was not immoral, and it was not wrong according to the culture of her day. It was a perfectly acceptable way to solve the problem she was facing by means of human wisdom, human ingenuity, and human action.

You say, well, Lon, wait, hey, stop, whoa. Is anything wrong with human ingenuity? Is anything wrong with human action?

I mean, sometimes doesn't God ask us to help his plan come to fruition in our life by us taking some human action? Well, friends, that's a great question, and we're going to answer it in just a moment. Hold on to it.

We're coming back. But first, why don't we see what happened with Abraham and Sarah. Verse 3. And Abraham agreed to what Sarah said. Would you notice, please, the Bible never says he prayed about it, the Bible never says he saw God on it, the Bible never says God spoke to him about it, or that God gave him the okay.

He just simply made a quick decision. So after Abraham had been living in Canaan for ten years, Sarah gave her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar to her husband, and he slept with Hagar, and she conceived. And when Hagar knew that she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress, Sarah. Somehow, Hagar began to rub it in that she was now carrying the child that Sarah had never been able to.

Maybe it was a little look, or maybe it was a little smirk, or maybe it was a little comment, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. Verse 5. Then Sarah said to Abraham, you are responsible for this wrong that I am suffering. See folks, the world has not changed.

In four thousand years it hasn't changed. Sarah said, I put my handmaiden in your arms, and now that she knows she's pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you, Abraham, and me. And that's not a good thing Sarah was calling for there. Now I'm sure that Abraham tried to reason with her. I'm sure he tried to say, Sarah, look, this wasn't my idea, this was your idea. I didn't think of this, you thought of this.

I was only trying to do what makes you happy. But she was in no mood. So as a result, Abraham did what every experienced husband does in a situation like this. He ran for cover.

That's what he did. And look, he says, verse 6, your maiden is in your hands. You do with her whatever you want to do. I am out of this.

I am going to sit in the tent and drink coffee. I want nothing to do with what's happening here. Smart man. Then Sarah began to mistreat Hagar until Hagar fled from her. He said, well, why do that? Why didn't Sarah just throw her out on her ear? Well, friends, the reason is because she couldn't.

The reason is because it was illegal. The reason is because those same clay tablets at Newsy that tell about this surrogate motherhood also tell us that once that handmaiden conceived and got pregnant by means of the husband, it was illegal for the wife to throw her out. But Sarah could make life so miserable for Hagar that Hagar voluntarily left.

And that's what she did. Verse seven. Then the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a well, a spring in the desert. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? And she answered, I'm running away from my mistress, Sarah. Then the angel of the Lord said to her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. And I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.

You know, it's interesting. God said this very same thing about her son, Hagar's son. His name would be Ishmael in Chapter 17 of Genesis, verse 20. God said to Abraham, as for Ishmael, I will surely bless him and I will make him fruitful and I will greatly increase his numbers and I will make him into a great nation. My friends, these are the Arab people of today. They trace their lineage back to Ishmael.

They are descendants of Abraham and they have become the great people that God promised they would become. Verse 11. The angel also said to Hagar, you will have a son and you shall give him the name Ishmael, which means God hears because the Lord has heard of your misery. So Hagar said, you are the God who sees me.

You saw me here by this well. And she named the place Beer L'chai Roi, which means literally in Hebrew, Beer, the well, L'chai, of the living one, Roi, who sees me. Verse 15. So Hagar bore Abraham a son and Abraham gave him the name Ishmael.

And Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. Now that's as far as we're going to go in our passage today because we're going to stop now. We're going to ask our most important question.

So I need this to be really spectacular. Okay. And all of you out on the Internet, join us. Here we go now. Come on.

One, two, three. That was spectacular. That's really good. Okay. Give yourselves a hand.

That was awesome. You say, Lon, so what? I mean, none of this applies to I mean, I don't even I don't even own a handmaiden. What difference does any of this make to my life? This is completely irrelevant to me.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. There's a great spiritual lesson here.

Let me show you what it is. Friends, we mentioned earlier that Sarah's idea to give Hagar to Abraham was an attempt to help the plan of God along by human effort, human ingenuity and human action. And we also saw that according to the laws and the customs of their day, what Abraham and Sarah did was not illegal. It was not immoral and it was not wrong. But the real question is, was it unspiritual?

Was it unspiritual? So let's answer that question. When it comes to this issue, there are really two principles in the Word of God that exist in juxtaposition.

They exist in dynamic tension with one another. Let me tell you what they are. Principle number one is waiting on the Lord. Psalm thirty seven, verse four. David says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Therefore, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Psalm forty, verse one.

David says, I waited patiently for the Lord and he turned to me and heard my cry. Principle number one says, I know that God has a specific plan for how my life goes down to the very smallest details. And some of those details God wants to work out completely by his own power without my helping at all. And when it comes to those areas, any human action I take to try to help God out is only going to mess things up.

So in those areas, I need to keep my hands off of things and I need to wait patiently on the Lord until in his timing, he supernaturally acts for me. Now we see a great example of this in the life of King David, of principle number one. In first Samuel sixteen, Samuel the great prophet came and anointed David as the next king of Israel.

So David knew what God's plan and will was for his life. He was going to be the king of Israel. But Saul was still alive. In fact, Saul would be alive for another seven years and would remain king of Israel for another seven years. Twice during that period, David had the chance to kill Saul and become king himself. And his men urged him to do it. But David said, No, he said, No, no, no. This I'm not doing.

Listen to what he said. First Samuel twenty six, verse nine. The Lord forbid, David said, that I should lift my hand against him, Saul, for he is the Lord's anointed. As surely as the Lord lives, David says, the Lord will strike him.

Either his time will come and he'll die naturally or he'll go into battle and perish. But the Lord forbid that I should lay a hand on him. What is David saying here? David is saying, I know God's plan for my life. I'm supposed to be the king of Israel. But I also know that God wants to work this out in his own timing, in his own way without my help.

He doesn't want me to lift a pinky to be any part of this. And I'm just going to wait on the Lord to deal with Saul. Took seven years of David hiding in caves, but the Lord dealt with Saul and he honored David for just waiting on him. Now, that's the first principle. But there's a second principle that's just as real in the word of God.

And that's sanctified human action. Listen, the apostle Paul wrote Philippians four, verse 19, and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Jesus Christ. What a great promise from God, huh?

That he's going to meet all of our needs. The problem is that some of the believers in Thessalonica began to take this place as Paul never intended for it to go. They said, well, you know, if God's going to meet all of our needs, we don't need to go out and do anything. We're just going to wait on the Lord.

We're going to sit on our front porch and we're going to drink mint juleps until he sends a check in the mailbox with the return address heaven. And Paul wrote him and said, Oh, no, you don't. Listen, 2 Thessalonians 3 10. Paul said, Even when we were with you, we gave you this rule. If a man will not work, he shall not eat.

For we hear that some among you are idle, not being busy, but being busy bodies. Such people we command in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. Hey, friends, principle number two says, Yes, God has an exciting plan for my life, but God expects me to play a part in bringing this plan to fruition by engaging in sanctified, spirit directed, spirit filled human action. A good example of this comes out of the life of the Apostle Paul. This principle, when we pick up in the end of the book of Acts, the apostle Paul's in jail in Caesarea. And the Bible says Acts 23 verse 11. The following night, the Lord stood near Paul and said, Take courage, Paul, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem. So you must also testify in Rome. Okay, so Paul knows the plan of God for his life now, right? He knows the will of God. He's going to Rome. Yes.

Okay, he knows. Well, soon a new Roman governor named Festus showed up Acts 25 verse two. Then the chief priests and the Jewish leaders appeared before Festus and presented charges against Paul. They urgently requested Festus as a favor to them to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem for trial, for they were preparing an ambush to kill Paul along the way.

Now, Paul discovered this. And so when Festus asked Paul, Will you agree to go up to Jerusalem to stand trial? Paul said, Hey, Festus, if I'm guilty of doing anything deserving of death, I don't refuse to die. But if the charges against me by these Jews are false, no one has the right to hand me over to them.

Why? Because Paul was a Roman citizen and Paul had the right to be tried in a Roman court. And when he could see that Festus could care less and that Festus was going to hand him over to these Jews and that he was going to be ambushed and maybe killed on the way to Jerusalem, Paul exercised the right that every Roman citizen possessed. Acts 25 verse 11. He said to Festus, I appeal to Caesar.

You know what? Festus had no choice then but to send Paul to Rome. Paul knew he was going to Rome, but he brought it about by his own sanctified human action being a part of it.

He appealed to Caesar. Now, what I want you to see here is that David used principle number one. And Paul, in this case, used principle number two. And just as much as God honored David for principle number one, he honored Paul for using principle number two. He said, how do you know that?

Well, listen to what he said. Philippians chapter 1 verse 12. Paul's in jail in Rome. He writes and says, now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me, going to Rome, being in jail, has turned out for the advancement of the gospel. How could that be, Paul? For, he says, the entire palace guard, the Praetorian guard, Caesar's elite bodyguard, has heard about Christ because of my chains.

You know what he's talking about. If you were Caesar's prisoner, Paul appealed to Caesar. You had to be guarded by Caesar's personal bodyguard, the Praetorian guard.

And the way this was done is one member of the Praetorian guard on a revolving schedule had to be chained to you for twelve hours at a time. Friends, can you imagine being an unbelieving Roman soldier and being chained to the apostle Paul for twelve straight hours? Do you think you'd hear the gospel? Do you think you wouldn't have the gospel coming out your nose and ears after twelve hours next to the apostle Paul? That's why he said, every member of the Praetorian guard has heard the gospel because they've been chained to me and I gave it to them.

God used him. But friends, the point is, there's two different principles here. So you say, well, Lon, how do we know when God wants us to use one and when he wants us to use the other one?

How do we know when God wants us to wait on God and do nothing versus when God wants us to appeal to Caesar and take some human action? Well, that's the crucial issue, isn't it? And folks, that was the issue that Abraham and Sarah were grappling with.

Let me tell you something very fascinating. If you go back and look, Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 14, Genesis 15, you'll find that even though God kept telling Abraham he was going to have a son, he never in any of those chapters specifically told Abraham that the son would be by Sarah. You say, well, no, wait. No, of course he did.

Check it out. The first time ever that God told Abraham it was Sarah who was going to have this promised son was in Genesis 17, verse 16, and Ishmael was already born by then. You say, well, so what does that mean? What that means, my friends, is that when Sarah comes to Abraham in Genesis 16 with her idea about Hagar, are you with me?

Are you still with me? There were two legitimate, genuine options available to Sarah and Abraham. The first option was to wait on the Lord until Sarah got pregnant, principle number one. But the second option was to go the Hagar route and take some human action because up to this point they didn't know that this is not the way God wanted to do it. He hadn't told him it was Sarah. And the problem is that Abraham never stopped long enough to get on his knees and to seek the face of God and say, okay, God, I got both of these options available.

Which one do you want me to take? And to stay on his knees and do nothing until God made it clear which way he wanted him to go. Genesis 16 never indicates Abraham did that. He just reacted. He made a decision.

He said, sure, Sarah, no problem. And so here's our bottom line for today, my friends. How do we know whether in any given situation God wants us to go into human action Hagar mode or whether he wants us to go into wait on the Lord Sarah mode? Well, friends, the only way to know is to do what Abraham didn't do, and that is get on our face before God and ask God, Lord, which way do I go? They're both legitimate options. They're both biblically acceptable. But that's not the point. The point is which one do you want me to choose?

Or do you want me to wait for a while and then act? You know, when Brendan and I first moved to McLean Bible Church over 30 years ago, we moved over here and very quickly bought a house in McLean. And it was a house that we couldn't really afford.

Now, I'm particularly gifted at doing stuff like this if you don't know if you're not. And slowly but surely trying to keep up with the payments on this house was draining our savings, draining our savings till eventually after about four years, our savings were all but gone. And my wife, Brenda, kept coming to me and saying, Lon, this is not working. We need to sell this house.

We need to move into something cheaper. And I agreed with her. I mean, I could see what was happening to our savings account. And I would go and pray about it and say, Lord, we need to sell this house. And I'm telling you, the Lord kept telling me, wait, not yet.

Wait. And I kept saying, but Lord, you know my bank, you see what you wait. And I would tell Brenda, the Lord's telling me to wait. And Brenda would say, the Lord's telling you to wait. I'm like, yeah, Brenda, honest.

He is honest. I'm praying about this and he really is. And being a godly woman as she is, Brenda said, OK, you know, I'll let the Lord lead you. That's OK. And I slowly watched this go broke and burn up all our savings and said, Lord, come on, what's the deal here? Finally, one Saturday night, I was down praying, getting ready for Sunday in my office on my knees.

That was before we had Saturday night service. And just like that, I'm telling you like that, it's like the Lord said to me, OK, you got clearance, sell the house. You say, well, how can you be so sure?

Friends, if you get on your knees and talk to God long enough, you'll know when God's telling you something. And I got up, went right upstairs Saturday night and said, Brenda, I just got clearance. She said to do what? I said to sell the house.

She's like, OK. And we had some owner financing, some take back financing from the people we brought the house from. So I had to call them and tell them I was selling the house. And so I said, I'm a call them right now, Saturday night. And I did. And the lady, the wife answered the phone and she said, I told her we were selling the house and she said, have you sold it yet? And I said, no. And so she said, could I buy it back?

I said, well, I mean, if you want to. I had I you know, I was looking at this and saying, my gosh, if I list the house, I have to pay realtors fees. I got to pay closing costs. I got to paint the house. I got to fix the house up. I've got to make sure the house is showable. But I figured all this out, friends. And I figured out by the time I did all that, we'd probably lose money on the house. And I didn't have any money to lose. We were empty. This woman said to me on the phone, could I buy my house back?

Yeah. She said, I'll tell you what. My husband just told me that he was leaving me, divorcing me 48 hours ago and kicking me out of the house. And I need a place to go. And I'd love to have my house back.

Could I buy my house back? I said, well, sure. How much were we talking about here? So we hacked out a price.

And she said to me, now, here's the deal. I don't want you to put it on the market. I don't want you to pay realtors fees.

I'll cover the closing costs. I don't want you to paint it. I don't want you to improve it.

I don't want you to do anything. I'll take it just the way it is. I just want my house back. I'm telling you, this is the easiest house I ever sold in my whole life.

It was amazing. And, boy, did I need someone who wanted a house just like that. Now, here's the point, my friends. She said to me, you know, if you'd have called me even a week ago, I would have told you to go sell the house and list it. Because she said, I didn't know till 48 hours ago I was going to need a house. She said, your timing is impeccable. It wasn't my timing.

I wanted to sell the house months before. It was the Lord's timing. And he was trying to bless me. And I was chafing under it and saying, Lord, and he was trying to bless me. Man, I'm so glad I waited. Friend, let me tell you, if there are situations in your life right now that you're chafing under and the Lord's telling you just to wait, he's trying to bless you.

It's just that you and I, in our puny human logic, are too foolish to realize it. You need to go to God and get on your face before the Lord. Isaiah 30 verse 21 says, You will hear a voice behind you saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. God will tell you whether to wait or to act if you'll just stop and listen. But the problem is we're often blowing past him so fast we don't even stop and listen. Stop and listen. He'll tell you what to do and exactly when to do it. And if you've got a situation like that, I urge you, get on your face before God and stay there until God gives you liberty to go one way or the other.

And friends, one closing piece of advice. If in doubt, wait. If you're not sure what the Lord's telling you, wait.

Listen, I have seldom ever regretted an action that I waited to take, but boy, I sure have regretted some actions that I've hurried to take. If God hadn't made it clear, just wait and God will make sure he tells you right on schedule what to do. I hope that this will change the way we make decisions because we were here today and we sat under the teaching of the word of God.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you tell us in the Bible if we lack wisdom, we're to ask for it, James chapter one, and you will give it. But Lord, remind us as Elijah discovered that you weren't in the whirlwind and you're not in the storm and you're not in the tornado.

It's a still small voice with which you speak to us. And Lord, forgive us for being in so much of a hurry most of the time that we don't even stop long enough to seek and to listen to that still small voice. We make a lot of bad decisions because of that. Father, change the very way we make decisions because we were here today. Teach us to fall to our knees and to pray before we act. And not to act until we have clearance from the Lord.

We'll make much better decisions that way. So thanks for speaking to us today and teaching us from your word. And we pray these things in Jesus name. And what do God's people say? Amen. You.