SPEAKER_01: This morning's reading is Genesis twenty one.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
SPEAKER_01: And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.
SPEAKER_01: Abram called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Samar Sarah bore to him Isaac, and Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him, and Sarah said, God has made laughter for me.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who hears will laugh over me.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Who would you have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?
SPEAKER_01: Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.
SPEAKER_01: And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
SPEAKER_01: But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham laughing.
SPEAKER_01: So 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.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son.
SPEAKER_01: But God said to Abraham, Be not displeased, because of the body because of the boy and because of your slave woman.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever Sarah says to you, do she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named, and I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.
SPEAKER_01: So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.
SPEAKER_01: She departed and wandered in the wilderness of Bersheba.
SPEAKER_01: When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes.
SPEAKER_01: Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, Let me not look on the death of the child.
SPEAKER_01: And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.
SPEAKER_01: 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?
SPEAKER_01: Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
SPEAKER_01: Up, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: And God was with the boy, and he grew up.
SPEAKER_01: He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow.
SPEAKER_01: He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: At that time Abimelech and Fikal, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do.
SPEAKER_01: Now therefore swear to me here by God that you 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.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham said, I will swear.
SPEAKER_01: When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized, Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing.
SPEAKER_01: You did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today.
SPEAKER_01: So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham set seven Ewlambs of the flock apart, and Abimelech said to Abraham, What is the meaning of these seven Ewlambs that you've set apart?
SPEAKER_01: He said, These seven Ewlams you will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore that place place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath.
SPEAKER_01: So they made a covenant at Beersheba.
SPEAKER_01: Then Abimelech and Fikal, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_01: And so read God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Good to welcome you.
SPEAKER_00: The final thing as we get into it that I'd like to say to you is, I guess by way of confession, uh I'd like to confess uh something uh on uh behalf of my wife and I as I get into this passage, uh, that we have a uh a guilty pleasure that we like to watch.
SPEAKER_00: It's just finished.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that is uh that I must confess to you that we rather enjoy watching Married at First Sight.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever seen this program.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we certainly don't endorse this way of conducting relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the uh the principle behind the TV program, if you've never seen it, where have you been?
SPEAKER_00: Um but if you've never seen it is that uh people who have never met one another obviously fill in uh a questionnaire and they are complete strangers, but they're matched by experts uh who match them up.
SPEAKER_00: We are convinced that we would be better experts and matching people.
SPEAKER_00: And the first time that uh these two complete strangers meet is on their wedding day, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh where everybody's dressed up and it's we all we've got to start our life together.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so the ceremony begins and uh the couple begins their life in the experiment, and they make vows and promises uh to one another.
SPEAKER_00: And 85% of the time by week 10, when the series is ended, the the relationships have completely detonated.
SPEAKER_00: And I think about another 10% in the in the weeks afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you hear people going off and leaving their their spouse that they met at first sight, saying things like, oh well, I actually wasn't ready for a relationship, and uh, oh, I just have to be true to myself.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so they they leave the vows and the promises that they made 10 weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: Married at first sight doesn't have any particular uh commitment to it.
SPEAKER_00: Those promises are so easily done away with, they're completely chip paper disposable.
SPEAKER_00: And it just seems normal that people would do that, that people would walk away when they don't feel like they're uh particularly satisfied by the relationship, when they don't really feel uh uh engaged or or fulfilled in it.
SPEAKER_00: It just seems normal for people to break their promises all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We expect people to break promises.
SPEAKER_00: We certainly expect our leaders uh to break promises.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I guess so many people are cynical and skeptical when it comes to politics.
SPEAKER_00: Promises are broken by those who we love, promises are broken by those who we look up to, promises are broken by uh by parents and spies.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have had promises broken that have been profoundly hurtful.
SPEAKER_00: And then there are times when we ourselves have been the promise breakers.
SPEAKER_00: When actually we have walked away from those things that we have vowed.
SPEAKER_00: Even faith can sometimes feel like a bunch of broken promises.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why actually people are skeptical about any claims that God might make or that we might make here on a Sunday morning on his behalf.
SPEAKER_00: People have trusted institutions and religious leaders, had relationships with them in the past that have left people feeling hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And so the idea of trusting someone or trusting an institution or entrusting yourself to God is a scary prospect because actually what you have experienced is when you have left yourself vulnerable, you've been left let down.
SPEAKER_00: People have broken their promises.
SPEAKER_00: That can leave us jaded when it comes to God and the claims of of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of wonder, well, is is God just kind of is he all talk as well?
SPEAKER_00: So many people in in my life have been all talk.
SPEAKER_00: They've said one thing and they've done another.
SPEAKER_00: And is God like that?
SPEAKER_00: If you notice that that actually a lot of the time when we're when we're feeling hurt, we project that upwards and we project those uh those negative experiences upwards on our view of God.
SPEAKER_00: I think, well, is God just like that?
SPEAKER_00: Is he just all talk as well?
SPEAKER_00: And as we've seen, as we've been going through the Abraham narrative, these sorts of emotions are part of the normal human experience.
SPEAKER_00: Both the Abraham and Sarah have doubted whether or not God will make good on his promises in various ways at various points through their life that we've been following up until this point.
SPEAKER_00: But here in this passage, the thing to come away with is what we were singing in the kids' song.
SPEAKER_00: That God's not all talk, that God does actually always keep his promises.
SPEAKER_00: And that if you can put roots down into that, and if you can begin to build your life on that, you're building on something that will never be shaken.
SPEAKER_00: You're building on someone who won't walk away.
SPEAKER_00: You're building on someone who isn't all talk.
SPEAKER_00: And so my hope this morning is that as we look at this passage, we'll we'll see three things that uh God always keeps his promises, he keeps his promises through the pain, and he keeps his promises even in the mundane.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the three things this morning.
SPEAKER_00: First, God keeps his promises.
SPEAKER_00: The passage opens immediately after Abraham had nearly jeopardized uh his family again, he had given Sarah away again and had lied again.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, the passage opens, and we see that the long-awaited son is born.
SPEAKER_00: Isaac has arrived, hurrah! It is wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And look at the repetition in verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: If you're uh, in order to look at the repetition in verses one and two, it uh would be good for you to have chapter 21 of Genesis open in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: Pull it up in Bible Gateway on your phone, English Standard Version of the Bible, and we're looking at verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you've got a Bible app, look at it there.
SPEAKER_00: Because the repetition here is on uh is emphasizing what God had said, what God had promised.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: He visited Sarah as he had said, he did to Sarah as he had promised.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah conceived at the time at which God had spoken to her.
SPEAKER_00: He did exactly as he promised.
SPEAKER_00: The long-awaited son, the son through whom all of the nations of the world would ultimately be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: He's finally here.
SPEAKER_00: Despite all of the failures of Abraham and Sarah, despite all of the doubts, despite all of the questions, he's born just as God had said.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the most surprising thing about these verses?
SPEAKER_00: The most surprising thing about these verses is not that Isaac is born, but it's how matter-of-fact it all is.
SPEAKER_00: That actually in the grand scheme of the passage of the chapter, so little time is given to talking about the birth of Isaac, the son of promise, the son that Abraham had longed for for 30 years at this point.
SPEAKER_00: You would expect trumpeters, angelic hosts coming and announcing, you'd expect more details.
SPEAKER_00: Did she have an epijal?
SPEAKER_00: How was the labor?
SPEAKER_00: Did she go on?
SPEAKER_00: You know, how was it?
SPEAKER_00: We would expect more details, but no, Isaac was born just as God had said.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why is there no dramatic buildup?
SPEAKER_00: Why is there so little detail?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it so matter-of-fact?
SPEAKER_00: Because as far as God was concerned, it was never in doubt.
SPEAKER_00: As far as God was concerned, it was never in doubt.
SPEAKER_00: It's as though, with the brevity, God is challenging us and he's kind of saying, sorry, did you did you think that I was all talk?
SPEAKER_00: You didn't think that I was all talk, did you?
SPEAKER_00: Did you think that I wouldn't make good on that?
SPEAKER_00: Of course I make good on it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the promise keeping God.
SPEAKER_00: I always keep my promises.
SPEAKER_00: I promise that I did, and I did it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's move on.
SPEAKER_00: The story continues.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, really.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah and Abraham both did struggle to believe that God would be good to his word at various points.
SPEAKER_00: But the the brevity and matter-of-factness of these verses is so much better than their failing and faltering faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because what it shows us is that all of their failures, all of their doubts, never jeopardize the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really good news for us because that points us again to the fact that God is the God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: He is the God of undeserved kindness.
SPEAKER_00: He makes promises and he keeps them, and his keeping them is not based on the clarity of your faith.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps them and his keeping them is not based on whether or not you would ever have any doubts.
SPEAKER_00: He keeps them because of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Because he is enduringly faithful, even when you are faithless.
SPEAKER_00: God has made promises similarly to us.
SPEAKER_00: Promises made to us in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus, he has promised to forgive all who would come to him.
SPEAKER_00: He has promised that in that forgiveness would be an adoption into his family, to be a son, a daughter of the king.
SPEAKER_00: A promise to change us, a promise to persevere with us through all of our foibles and failings, through all of our faithlessness, and to preserve us until the end.
SPEAKER_00: To keep us in his love and to be God to us forever.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we struggle, when we falter, when we fail, when we make stupid decisions like Abraham does more than once, does that jeopardize God's promises?
SPEAKER_00: Do we make them less sure?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're not grounded in us in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: They are grounded in the promise-keeping God who will see them done.
SPEAKER_00: This, friends, is the essence of faith.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know, do I have faith?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the question.
SPEAKER_00: Do you take God at His Word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear His promises?
SPEAKER_00: His promises to be God to you, His promises to forgive you, and do you trust them?
SPEAKER_00: That's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Do you take God at His Word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that when He speaks, He speaks truthfully and isn't just all talk?
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that we actually stand in a much better position than Abraham and Sarah, because we see the full technicolor culmination of all of the things that Abraham and Sarah were glimpsing at, straining to see down the corridors of time.
SPEAKER_00: We see them all fulfilled ultimately in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so for us, the the certainty is more assured.
SPEAKER_00: But the call is the same.
SPEAKER_00: The call is to take God at His Word.
SPEAKER_00: To trust Him, to trust His promise, to trust His promise of forgiveness and of new life.
SPEAKER_00: Do you take God at His word?
SPEAKER_00: And look at Sarah's response.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah responds with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six, and Sarah said, God has made laughter for me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Isaac means.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone who hears will laugh over me.
SPEAKER_00: She laughs with joy.
SPEAKER_00: She cannot believe it.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember back to chapter 18, just three chapters ago, she laughed a kind of cynical numbness at the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: But now God has turned her cynicism into joy and delight.
SPEAKER_00: Her response is how we ought to respond when the God of grace shows up and visits us.
SPEAKER_00: When he shows that he is good to his word, when he fulfills his promises, even though we have had nothing to do to deserve or to merit them.
SPEAKER_00: What's our response?
SPEAKER_00: It's to look with laughter and joy and delight that God would do that for us.
SPEAKER_00: That I just as she looked down at that newborn and the smile, her face hurt, because she just couldn't stop smiling.
SPEAKER_00: That God would be so good to his promises.
SPEAKER_00: So it is for every Christian that actually that that sense of delight, that sense of joy, that God would be so good to us that he would keep his promises despite ourselves, despite our failings.
SPEAKER_00: An appropriate response of faith is to be joyful.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham also responds, and I'm sure he responds with joy, but one of the things that the passage focuses in on is that Abraham uh takes the boy and uh circumcises him.
SPEAKER_00: This is verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God had told him to do back in chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: When you give him the sign of circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new, you get to go and you can go back and you can listen to a whole sermon on circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: It's up there on Spotify.
SPEAKER_00: But not getting into all of that, the point simply is that Abraham responds with obedience to God.
SPEAKER_00: God has shown up, he has shown him his grace, he has made good on his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah responds with joy, and Abraham responds with obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He does what God said.
SPEAKER_00: And taking those two things in tandem, that's kind of the Christian life, folks.
SPEAKER_00: Joy in God, listening to him and doing what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Not in order to earn the promises, but in response to the promises already made and delivered.
SPEAKER_00: In joyous, gratitude-filled obedience to the God who has loved you.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we see here from Abraham and Sarah.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's worth reflecting on this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Does the have you experienced the goodness of God to you?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen him make good on his promises?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen how it is that he has come and he has lived and he has died and he has rose again for you to secure your forgiveness, to adopt you into a new community, the church, into the family of God?
SPEAKER_00: That he has promised to make you a new creation in Christ, that he has promised to keep you secure in everlasting, nail-pierced at hands.
SPEAKER_00: And in embracing that, does that give you joy?
SPEAKER_00: Can you enjoy God this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Can you reflect on him and think even if this is hard for those of us who have been Christian for um for lots of years because these things aren't new, and so we get kind of familiar, and familiarity tends to breed, if not contempt, at least I kind of go, Oh yeah, I know that.
SPEAKER_00: But it's worth kind of sitting back and going, actually, the salvation that God brings is truly wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing that he would love the likes of me.
SPEAKER_00: This is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Delight you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Are you listening to him to what he is saying to you for your life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you responding to him in grace-fueled obedience?
SPEAKER_00: God always keeps his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, God keeps his promises even through pen.
SPEAKER_00: God keeps his promises even through pen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the narrative takes a sad turn.
SPEAKER_00: When we go on, we we read about how Isaac was weaned.
SPEAKER_00: Now in the ancient Near East, um, that was a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the child at this point, Isaac's around somewhere between two and three.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he's not six months old.
SPEAKER_00: Old.
SPEAKER_00: He's between two and three.
SPEAKER_00: And the weaning of a child was a cause for celebration because of infant mortality and all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: And so Abraham throws this big party to celebrate Isaac's weaning.
SPEAKER_00: And that means that Ishmael, his older brother, is at this point about 16, 17 years old.
SPEAKER_00: So he's a he's a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: And we read in verse 9 that Sarah sees Ishmael laughing at the boy.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me in verse 9, but Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing.
SPEAKER_00: And this laughter here, there's every indication in the text to indicate that this laughter was not a laughter of joy and delight at his little brother, but a laughter of mockery.
SPEAKER_00: A kind of a looking down on the on the child, on the little one, and going, This is who you were waiting for?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, probably every older sibling uh looks at your younger siblings like that.
SPEAKER_00: This is what you really wanted?
SPEAKER_00: You know.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, spot the ones with younger siblings.
SPEAKER_00: Looking down, going, he's mocking.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Him.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that he is mocking, stand in mock standing in mockery over this over the son of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: He's mocking the promised one, the one through whom God would ultimately work to bring blessing to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah, therefore, who it seems must have always struggled with the presence of Hagar and Ishmael ever since her terrible ideas in chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: She goes to Abraham and she demands that the son and the boy and his mother should be sent away.
SPEAKER_00: This is clearly a very difficult thing for Abraham to contend with.
SPEAKER_00: And that's very understandable, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Abraham, uh, before uh back in chapter 17 had pleaded with God that actually uh that that Ishmael would be would be kind of incorporated in, that he would be the one who would inherit the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's a dad and he loves his boy.
SPEAKER_00: So this idea of having to send him away is it's very difficult for him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God comes to him and says, Do as Sarah is advising you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Send the boy away.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you kind of you kind of bulk at that slide and go, why would why would God say that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would God do that?
SPEAKER_00: That seems strange.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem kind.
SPEAKER_00: There are at least two reasons why God would do this.
SPEAKER_00: The first reason is that Ishmael is sent away because of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael is sent away because of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: You would think that in the in the story of Abraham's life that we've been going through since September, that the arrival of Isaac would be the high watermark of Abraham's story, that it would be the peak of his faith.
SPEAKER_00: But his faith does not crest here, but rather in the next chapter, there is more work to be done in Abraham's heart before we see the high point of his faith next week.
SPEAKER_00: Now God has already promised, he's already promised Hagar, and he has promised Abraham that the boy will be okay.
SPEAKER_00: He has promised Abraham that the boy will grow up, he will survive, the princes will come from him.
SPEAKER_00: And so at this moment, he is asking Abraham to trust him again.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Can you trust me with this?
SPEAKER_00: The boy will be okay.
SPEAKER_00: You can send him away because he's going with me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to leave him.
SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
SPEAKER_00: Trust my promise.
SPEAKER_00: You've just seen me fulfill the promise with the birth of Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: Now trust me with Ishmael.
SPEAKER_00: Entrust him to me.
SPEAKER_00: Let go of his hand and let me take it.
SPEAKER_00: In little ways.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham is every parent at that point.
SPEAKER_00: Because every parent at some point must entrust their child to the promise and care of God.
SPEAKER_00: The second reason why this occurs is for us.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael is sent away for us.
SPEAKER_00: And what do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just explain again what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's worth just kind of stepping out of the sermon and just giving a little bit of comment on how it is that I'm interpreting passages.
SPEAKER_00: This is so that actually when you come to read the Bible for yourself, you can see the things that I'm seeing rather than just thinking that Mark is some sort of magic man who comes up with these great interpretations.
SPEAKER_00: So let me just make one brief um kind of methodological comment.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament, uh, places like 1 Corinthians 10, um, Paul tells us there how we ought to read the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And how we ought to read the Old Testament is in this way: that the Old Testament is a essentially a worked out in history case study of how we ought to live.
SPEAKER_00: That those things were written for us in order to understand the characters of the character of God and the character of human nature.
SPEAKER_00: And so the things that we read in the whole in the Old Testament are not just simply history lessons, but things for us to learn about God and his working in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So the question then is, what is uh the sending away of Ishmael teaching us about God and how he works?
SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, there is a lot of uh there's a lot of work already done on that for us.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael is sent away in order to teach us something.
SPEAKER_00: He is sent away in order to teach us this.
SPEAKER_00: He is the son of the will of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: He is the son of the will of humans, not the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: This was Sarah's idea to Abraham in Genesis 16.
SPEAKER_00: He comes from flesh, not from promise.
SPEAKER_00: And he sent a way to show us that none of us lay hold of the promises of God by our own efforts.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: None of us lay hold of the promises of God, become sons or daughters of God because of human will or exertion.
SPEAKER_00: We only become sons of the promise as a gift of grace, trusting in the promise.
SPEAKER_00: This is what uh what Paul lays out.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about this in Galatians chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: If you're making notes, just write Galatians chapter four, go and read it this afternoon, where he's saying, he draws this metaphorical contrast between the son of Hagar and the son of Sarah.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying the son of Hagar represents the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That is you trying to work your way into God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you must send away the son of the flesh, you must send away all of that thinking that you can earn God's love.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You can't.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You must rather embrace the son of Sarah, the son of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: It's only by trusting the promise, it's only by grace can you become a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that if you follow the son of Hagar, the son of the slave woman, you yourself will become a slave.
SPEAKER_00: You yourself will be enslaved by to constantly trying to work to get yourself into God's good books.
SPEAKER_00: And it will never really satisfy you, you'll never be assured of it.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas actually, if you trust the Son of the Promise, you'll be free because you yourself will be a son and not a slave.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael is sent away for us.
SPEAKER_00: Or even in John 1 that we'll read in our Carl service.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that prologue of John, where it says, To him, oh sorry, to those who received him, that's Jesus, he gave them the right to be called children of God, not born of blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but of God.
SPEAKER_00: The sending away of Ishmael is an illustration for each of us that we do not lay hold to the promises of God by our own strength or goodness or position, but only by his grace.
SPEAKER_00: So Hagar and Ishmael are sent away, and just as he as God did when Hagar was pregnant, he shows up again to both comfort and provide.
SPEAKER_00: They're wandering in the wilderness near a place called Beersheba, and they run out of water.
SPEAKER_00: In the scorching heat of the day, Hagar lays the boy down in the shade of a tree and goes some distance away because she cannot bear to see her son perish.
SPEAKER_00: There God speaks to her and reminds her of what he had already promised, that he is the promise-keeping God, that he's going to make Ishmael a great nation.
SPEAKER_00: And then he opens her eyes to see a well there in Bersheba.
SPEAKER_00: And so Ishmael lives.
SPEAKER_00: And we read that the Lord was with him.
SPEAKER_00: This is verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: And God was with the boy, and he grew up.
SPEAKER_00: He lived in the wilderness, became an expert with a bow, and he ended up getting married to an Egyptian woman.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael here is not the son of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: He's not the one through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, God is gracious to him.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: He's still a recipient of God's grace, a recipient of the grace that is common to all mankind.
SPEAKER_00: There's no indication that Ishmael becomes a follower of Yahweh, a follower of God, and yet God is still gracious to him.
SPEAKER_00: And that is true for us too.
SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, there are two types of grace.
SPEAKER_00: There is God's saving grace that we often talk about, how you cannot merit your own salvation, you cannot make God love you.
SPEAKER_00: God instead is undeservedly kind to you and saves you, makes you his own, forgives your sin, that God's saving grace.
SPEAKER_00: But there is also a second type of grace, that is God's common grace.
SPEAKER_00: That is his grace to everyone, whether they recognize him or not.
SPEAKER_00: So the psalmist says the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
SPEAKER_00: Because that would be weird, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If actually only the crops of righteous people got watered.
SPEAKER_00: You think, why is there a rain?
SPEAKER_00: Why does the rain stop here?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: God makes the rain to fall on everyone.
SPEAKER_00: That's his common grace.
SPEAKER_00: He is kind in some ways to all mankind, whether or not they recognize him.
SPEAKER_00: It is worth then thinking, well, maybe you're not a believer here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you should ask yourself the questions.
SPEAKER_00: Well, look back at your life.
SPEAKER_00: Look around at your life right now and think, oh, are there moments where actually God is at work and I'm I'm not actually seeing it?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should be more attuned to his fingerprints.
SPEAKER_00: God works to keep his promises.
SPEAKER_00: He works to keep his promises even though things are painful.
SPEAKER_00: He was committed to Ishmael because of his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Even though it was painful for Abraham, it must have broken his heart to send the boy away.
SPEAKER_00: But he knew the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: And despite the tears, he trusted him.
SPEAKER_00: God keeps his promises through the pain.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, God keeps his promises even in the mundane.
SPEAKER_00: God keeps his promises even in the mundane.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter ends very strangely.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, Ishmael's being sent away.
SPEAKER_00: It's like Jerry Springer, and there's all this family tension and what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Jerry Springer's a dated reference, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But there you go.
SPEAKER_00: And then the chapter ends with, and so there was um there's this well, and uh there's something about sheep and an agreement.
SPEAKER_00: And you think why?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we finishing like that?
SPEAKER_00: That was my work this week.
SPEAKER_00: Abimelech appears again.
SPEAKER_00: Good to see him.
SPEAKER_00: He uh we saw him last week.
SPEAKER_00: He appears regarding this well.
SPEAKER_00: The issue of the well seems to be this Abraham had dug it, um and uh and yet Abimelech's men had uh had seized it for their use, uh, which in the scorching climate of the Middle East was uh uh was a pretty uh big problem.
SPEAKER_00: Water was a uh precious commodity.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham had dug the well, and yet Abimelech's men have taken operation of it.
SPEAKER_00: And so Abraham goes and he makes this treaty with Abimelech and gives him a gift, gives him a gift of seven new lambs, and they swear an oath.
SPEAKER_00: And so in the end, the well indeed belongs to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we reading any of this?
SPEAKER_00: I think that the key comes in verse 22, at the very start of the narrative.
SPEAKER_00: First three words at that time at that time What time?
SPEAKER_00: The time that Hagar and Ishmael were being sent away.
SPEAKER_00: At that time.
SPEAKER_00: It's not clear exactly when.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem to be immediately after, it seems to be around the same time as around the same time that Abraham was negotiating a dispute about securing a well, God was working.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham was seeing livestock and livelihood, but God was seeing a teenage boy and his mother and the keeping of his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham and Abimelech swore an oath and called the well Bersheba, meaning place of the oath.
SPEAKER_00: But they had no idea that God himself was keeping an oath that he had sworn seventeen years ago to a pregnant teenage girl that he would bring her son to fruition and make him great.
SPEAKER_00: And so in her desperation, she finds herself in Bathsheba, and she looks up and she sees a well.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_00: In your life, you're making decisions, and choices about livelihood and love, and all around it, God is doing ten thousand other things, and you maybe get to glimpse three of them.
SPEAKER_00: You've all made decisions in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You made decisions to come to Dublin for work or for study, and you find love.
SPEAKER_00: God was working in ways that you didn't intend and you didn't see until he brought it before your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: God works even in the mundane.
SPEAKER_00: I have a friend of mine who's also called Mark.
SPEAKER_00: Um he is a pastor up in Donegal, and uh we pray uh every other Wednesday morning, and Mark is uh Mark's blind in one eye and uh has very poor insight uh in another.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, uh he was uh speaking to to a young man, teenager, 17, 18 years old, at a at a youth camp.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this young man was asking Mark whether or not he should consider going into ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Mark, Through Ways and Means basically said, no, I don't think you should.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's quite what your what your call for wasn't a good fit for him.
SPEAKER_00: And the young man chose a different career path.
SPEAKER_00: About a month ago, uh Mark let us know in the little WhatsApp group that we have that uh he was out swimming, he enjoys lake swimming, open water swimming, things like that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh in the in the course of a race, he got knocked in his good eye.
SPEAKER_00: And what has ended up happening is that one of the little kind of muscular guide ropes that holds your lens in place has become detached in his good eye.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's really struggling uh to see at the minute, and things uh don't look great uh right now.
SPEAKER_00: But when that happened, and in that situation, he was able to call up an old friend who he'd known years ago, who was now a consultant ophthalmologist after being diverted away from a call to ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget that God is at work in the mundane things of your life.
SPEAKER_00: The little things, the throwaway conversations.
SPEAKER_00: This may have just been a well.
SPEAKER_00: But remember also that it was a well in the land of promise.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't just promise Abraham a child, he promised him a place.
SPEAKER_00: God is showing glimpses of his persistent faithfulness here all the way through this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: See, not all of the promises of God come at once.
SPEAKER_00: God has promised to renew us, and yet we still struggle with sin.
SPEAKER_00: It will only be on that last day that we finally are rid of that monkey of sin that sits on our backs.
SPEAKER_00: Not all of his promises come at once.
SPEAKER_00: The son of promise Isaac is born, but the land it's still a long way off, and yet just here the passage closes with a little foretaste, just a well.
SPEAKER_00: And so Abraham plants a tree.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because trees take time to grow.
SPEAKER_00: They take time to mature, just like God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: Just like our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham would never sit in the shade of the tree.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham would never sit in the land of promise fully realized.
SPEAKER_00: But his descendants would in the land that God had promised.
SPEAKER_00: Do little things, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Do little things and do them in faith.
SPEAKER_00: Do mundane things and do them with faith.
SPEAKER_00: Plant seeds, knowing that you'll never sit in the shade of those trees and cry out to the God of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham here in the close of the passage calls God the everlasting God.
SPEAKER_00: And really, actually, the passage couldn't close with a better description.
SPEAKER_00: And as you think of God's promises, you think that they span not just lifetimes, but generations and centuries and millennia.
SPEAKER_00: What a great description to call him the everlasting God.
SPEAKER_00: The everlasting God works on a different schedule to us, and he works in the things that we would never even consider.
SPEAKER_00: No one would ever consider that the everlasting God would just at the right time bind himself to time, that the Creator would take on the form of a creature and enter our world, eternity bending itself to time.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: So that he could continue to show himself to be the everlasting, faithful, promise keeping God of grace, the one who is faithful to his promises, who's faithful to his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Promises even through pain, who's faithful to his promises even in the mundane things of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But that's who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: The everlasting one who bent to time, the Son of Promise, descended from Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And in his coming we see that God has never been all talk, will never be all talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: He always keeps his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Trust him.