bringing us together this morning on this day, this Lord's Day. We do recognize the power that this day holds, that the rest of this day holds because of the Lord Jesus. We come together because of Him, because of His resurrection, because of His conquering death and sin and His reigning at your right hand. We pray that we would imitate Him in the sense that we do rule and reign. Father, it doesn't seem that way. You have said in Ephesians that we sit in the heavenly places, and it's difficult for us to comprehend what that means. But I do pray that you would apply that to our hearts and to our minds, to our lives. Father, today I pray that we would rest in the Lord Jesus. Lord, we rule and reign because of Him, and we rule and reign with Him and through Him. And I do pray that we would look to Him as our only hope of salvation, even as the saints in the Old Testament did. They looked forward to that which was coming. As we open up Your Scriptures, I do pray that You would encourage us, that You would strengthen us, that You would expose sin, expose things that don't need to be there, that are out of conformity with Your Word. I do pray that You would encourage us and motivate us and change us and shape us by the power of the Holy Spirit. that we might take up hold of those things which have already been laid a hold on by the Lord Jesus. We do thank you for this day. We ask that you'd help us to encourage one another. Bless us in this time and the next hour as well. In Jesus' name, Amen. Alright, turn with me to Genesis chapter 21. This is not my last Sunday. We were discussing it just a minute ago. I hopefully have five more because I'm not done with Abraham. I'm not ready to do five chapters today. So, we've got a few more weeks. We'll be going to the end of October. Genesis chapter 1. This is the culmination of many promises that have come to bear in this chapter. We'll go ahead and read first. And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God commanded him. And Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made me laugh, and all who will hear will laugh with me. She also said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? For I have born him a son in his old age. So the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing. Therefore she said to Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac. And the matter was very displeasing in Abraham's sight because of his son. But God said to Abraham, Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice. For in Isaac your seed shall be called. Yet I will also make a nation of the son of the bondwoman, because he is your seed. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water, putting it on her shoulder, and gave it and the boy to Hagar and sent her away. Then she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water in the skin was used up, and she placed the boy under one of the shrubs. And she went and sat across from him at a distance of about a bow shot. For she said to herself, let me not see the death of the boy. So she sat opposite him and lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the lad. The angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and said to her, what ails you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in your hand, for I will make him a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. Then she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. So God was with the lad, and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer. He dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. And it came to pass in the time that Abimelech and Pichol, the commander of his army, spoke to Abraham saying, God is with you in all that you do. Now, therefore, swear to me that by God you will not deal falsely with me, with my offspring, or with my posterity, but that according to the kindness that I have done to you, you will do to me and to the land in which you have dwelt. And Abraham said, I will swear. Then Abraham rebuked Abimelech because of a well of water which Abimelech's servants had seized. And Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, nor had I heard of it until today. So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. Then Abimelech asked Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set by themselves? And he said, you will take these seven ewe lambs from my hand, that they may be my witness that I have dug this well. Therefore, he called the place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. Thus they made a covenant in Beersheba. So Abimelech rose with Pichel, the commander of his army, and they returned to the land of the Philistines. And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines many days." As we said just a minute ago, many of the promises that God has made to Abraham culminate here in chapter 21, because Isaac is finally born, this seed, this promised seed. I want to rehearse just very briefly some history for you about Abraham's life that we've discussed thus far. Abraham's been wandering for 25 years. He left the land of Haran when he was 75 years old, and he's now 100. So he's been wandering for 25 years. God has already promised him a seed. He's promised him a land. He's promised him a posterity. He's promised him that his descendants will inherit this land, and that they will be oppressed, as we saw in chapter 15. They're going to be oppressed for 400 years, then they're going to come back out, and God's going to judge them. Up to this point, Abraham had no seed. He had no child. In chapter 16, we see that Abraham and Sarah more or less conspire to bring about seed through an illegitimate means. Sarah gives Hagar, the maidservant, to Abraham, and he produces this child, Ishmael. Or rather, Hagar, once she finds out that she has something up on Sarah, starts kind of taunting her and kind of acting presumptuously. So Sarah says, treats her badly and Hagar runs and Abraham does nothing. Now at this point, God has not promised specifically that the seed is going to come through Sarah. It just said he's going to produce a seed. So there's no reason, humanly speaking, to think that this child, this original child, may not be the one. So Abraham is willing to let this child and his mother just be kicked out. So Abraham's not very smart. Well, here we see something very similar. We've seen Abraham lie twice. We've seen him lie to the Pharaoh and we've seen him lie to Abimelech, the king of the Philistines here. So Abraham is not really acting all that wisely in terms of, he's not being very smart. Well, here we're going to see the same thing because he's willing to let Ishmael stay when Isaac is already the promised seed, specifically coming from Sarah. So we'll get to that in just a minute, but I want you to see, the reason I'm bringing this up is that God doesn't choose the wise. He does not choose the rich. He does not choose those things that we tend to think of as being the exalted ones. Abraham is a great man of faith. That's what distinguishes Abraham from his contemporaries, the fact that he trusts God. But he doesn't, as we've seen, trust God always in a manner that's consistent with how we would say being faithful is. But if we evaluate our own lives, we realize that we're not as faithful as we need to be, yet God is continually faithful to us. And that is the point of this entire narrative, and really the entire scriptural narrative of all of the patriarchs and all that's recorded for us, is that men are fallible. God is infallible. Men make promises and oaths that they break. God does not. God does not make promises in vain. God always fulfills all of his promises. And in chapter 21, this seed, Isaac, is born. And we see that Sarah in the first few verses here is mentioned on multiple occasions here. The Lord visited Sarah. The Lord did for Sarah as he promised. Verse 2, for Sarah conceived. Verse 3, whom Sarah born to him. Verse 7, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children. You see that this is a big deal. Sarah is 90 years old. She's giving birth to Isaac. She's nursing children at 90. Not something that most 90 year olds contemplate in terms of their activities when you get to 90. Nursing children, chasing children. This is exactly what's happened. Abraham's 100. This is pretty stupendous in itself. So God has made a promise. God has fulfilled his promise. Human means are really irrelevant. God can work beyond those means. God can work beyond our means and your means. Our situation, my situation in life, your station in life, I can't do that. You don't know what God can do through you and through your circumstances and through your situation. I'm unable to do this. I'm unable to go there or do that. Those are not Those are our limitations. Those are not God's limitations. And we see that very clearly here, that the Lord visits Sarah and he fulfills his promise. And this has been 25 years, at least, in the making, as it were. So we see that Abraham is old. He's bore Abraham a son in his old age. And she is old, of course. The fact that they're having this old people are having children. Now in verse 3, we see that Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. Isaac means laughter. And the topic of this little lesson we have this morning is called Two Kinds of Laughter, because we're going to see that both of Abraham's sons laugh, that they laugh in different contexts. Or rather, we say there's two different kinds of laughter, not that both of his sons laugh. But Sarah and Abraham are laughing. Now, what does that mean? And it's very interesting that the promise seed should be called laughter. Well, I think it's, again, to emphasize the fact that God produces things What did Jesus say to the Jews when they said, we're children of Abraham? Jesus says, I can produce children of Abraham from these rocks. Don't you think for a second that you have any claim over me because you're Jewish? And there's a very important lesson about Judaism in here because Galatians 4, Paul mentions this particular incident later on here where we read between what happened between Sarah and Hagar and Sarah kicking her out. Paul uses that analogy about Judaism. And he says, Judaism is going to be booted out. It's exactly what Paul says. We'll get to that here shortly. But the point I want you to recognize here is that God has fulfilled his promise. The promise is named laughter. The promised son is joy. It's laughter. It's not laughter in a, yeah, that's kind of funny. It's look what God has done. God has raised up a child from these old people, whom the writer of Hebrews says Abraham was as good as dead. I mean, that's a profound way for the holy apostle that was writing Hebrews to speak of Abraham. He's just as good as dead. But he produced children anyway. Why? Because God is the one who produced the children. Abraham's just a vessel. Abraham's going to die. I hate to, you know, if any of you haven't read Too Far Ahead, Abraham's going to die. Okay? And Isaac is going to die. This child that's just born, he's going to die. In fact, in the next section of Genesis, which I'll hopefully cover next year, the generations of Isaac are not really about Isaac at all. They're about Jacob. In this section of Scripture, of course, we're talking about the generations of Terah, who is not a main important character anyways. His son is, Abraham. So God doesn't move, and we've said this before, God does not act as though we would expect Him to act. He acts in a manner that's completely consistent with what He wants to do. Laughter. Joy. This is probably also part of what Jesus was discussing when Abraham said that, Abraham saw my day and rejoiced. He laughed. Because God is fulfilling His promise. I don't know how many of you have been praying for anything for 25 years or waiting for anything for 25 years. Some of you in here are not 25, so if you've been waiting for something since birth, okay? But this is how long Abraham has to wait to have the promised child come. And of course, this child is the seed, but he's just a baby. He's just a baby. Abraham still has to wait for this child to grow up and to do something. And what we're going to find out is Isaac doesn't really do anything except for produce two children. And they're both kind of a mess. We'll talk about that a year from now, but we already know the story of Jacob and Esau. Neither one of them are exactly model sons. These men, whom the promise comes through, are vessels, as it were, for God's promise. Because the important part is this laughter of God's promises moving through history. He's using weak vessels, no different than what the What Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, where he talks about the power that's in us, that we're weak vessels, because God is showing that it's His power that's on display. It's His promise that's on display. We're not sufficient. Any one of you to evaluate your own life. I know I do, my own life. I'm not sufficient to do these things. I feel kind of helpless and weak most of the time. I feel kind of frustrated. You get to the end of the week on Sunday, it's like, man, I really need to hear the Word, and you've got to listen to me. I just hope I get encouraged because this week has just been really terrible for me. I know some of you probably say that. Some of you have a good week. Most of you are going, that's not my week. I've been chasing kids. I've been dealing with work. It was end of the month this time, just about. All these things are going on. I feel kind of weak today. Well, that's how God uses you best is when you're in a weak spot. We can almost say that God really wasn't ready to move with Abraham. Why didn't God take Abraham when he was in his prime? young man, very old. I mean, Abraham is doing a lot when he's an old man here. God finally starts to do something when he's 75 and he goes out and conquers four kings and, you know, goes and rescues Lot and has kids and all this kind of stuff. What was he doing for the first 75 years of his life? I mean, who knows what he was doing? Probably nothing. But see, that's not when God wanted him. God wanted him when he was getting to be where, okay, outwardly speaking, you're not really doing anything. So Isaac comes, the laughter, the promised name. That is a promised name, by the way. God already said, your child is going to be named Isaac. And Abraham names him Isaac in obedience to that. That's how you know that if you're in the will of God. God says, name him Isaac, I'm going to name him something else. No. And, by the way, there is a little analogy there. God says, you will do good works. If you don't do good works, you may not be one of his children. You need to produce fruit. God says, this is what the faithful look like, you will produce fruit. This is why Paul says, don't sin presumptuously. Don't think. Should we sin that grace should abound? By no means. It's a small analogy, but I want you to see that in fulfillment to what God has said, Abraham does. In fulfillment to what God says you are meant to be, you do. Because if you don't, then you may not be. That's why the New Testament warns us about guarding our salvation, making sure your salvation is sure, making sure that it's really there. Not presumptuously saying, well, I was baptized. I got news for you, Ishmael was circumcised and getting ready to be booted out of the house. Many of the Jews were circumcised and were booted out of the house. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, or 2 Corinthians 10, that their bodies were scattered throughout the wilderness. God was displeased with him, which is an understatement, significantly. None of that generation but two men made it into the promised land. All right. Verse 4, Abraham circumcises his son when he was eight days old as God commanded him. He gives him the mark of the covenant. It's required for all those who would be partakers of the promise. God has already said that if you don't have this mark, you've been cut off from the house. If you don't cut yourselves, in token, of cutting off that sin, that uncleanness, then you're cut off from me. So Abraham circumcises his son. But as we've already said, that mark in itself is not enough to save. It only represents salvation, only represents it. When the children are baptized, it's a representation of that. It is not a sure thing because Ishmael was thrown out of the house. And of course, Paul I mean, most of the New Testament is written by Paul. That's why we keep referring to Paul. We've already looked at Romans chapter 2, where Paul says, a Jew is not one who is one outwardly, but one inwardly. So you might be baptized. You might have a certain mark on your person. That's no presumption. You don't hold anything over God. He's marking you. He's marking you for his own purposes. All right. Now, Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born to him. He was an old man. He was grandpa age. Actually, he was great grandpa age. And he's having children here. Now let's remember that Ishmael was born when he was 86. 86. Yeah, when Ishmael was born to Abraham, he was 86 years old. So Ishmael is 14 years old, more or less, when Isaac comes around when we come to this feast here. So we're talking about a child, but we're also talking about someone who's cognizant of what he's doing. So Abraham is old, he has children. I do need to mention this too, and I know I'm skipping ahead just a little bit, but in chapter 25, This is after the death of Sarah. I hate to ruin it for those of you who haven't read ahead, but we'll just have to do it anyway. Sarah's going to die, and it's going to say that Abraham took another wife named Petorah, and he has other sons. Now, the reason I bring this up is this. Chronologically, we see that Isaac's birth is second after Ishmael. And then later in Genesis 25, we see that Abraham has other sons. I have a tendency to go along with Calvin on this, where Calvin says this is probably not told in chronological order. Because if the Holy Apostle in Hebrews says that Abraham was as good as dead when he gave birth to Isaac, why would we think that all of a sudden he got his virility back and started having a bunch of children after Isaac? Isaac is probably the youngest child of other sons that he has there. The only two important ones for our purposes are Ishmael and Isaac. Yes, sir. 175. So he's got 75 more years of life. But following Calvin, he says that his, and I don't think that there's any reason not to dispute that. Well, when we get to 25, we'll talk about that a little bit in terms of the chronology. But he says if he was as good as dead when he gave birth to Isaac, I'm not sure that we would, you know, Calvin says, why would we think that all of a sudden he ended up being more stronger and more virile and having a lot more kids after that. It seems to be just the grace of God all the way through. Sure. Sure. 175. And there's all kind of chronological things that I'm not going to talk about today. We'll talk about that later. I mean, by the time that Abraham dies, his grandsons, Jacob and Esau are 15 years old. So they're around. So I mean, of course, none of that is present here. But if you do the math in terms of the chronology, I mean, Isaac lives to be 180. I haven't even gone back and look and see approximately where he died, because Jacob was not quite that old. He was old, but he didn't live to be 180. But the patriarchs are living less and less, of course, because just a few generations before, they were living 200. Uttara lived 205 years. And we go back even further. Verse 6, Sarah. God has made me laugh and all who will hear will laugh with me. We should be laughing. And there is a kind of proper laughter that we do when we say this. We should laugh when we see that God fulfills His promises in unexpected ways. Do you laugh when you're in a tight situation and God opens it up to you? fulfills a promise? Do we laugh? We should laugh. We should laugh for joy because God doesn't forget His promise. He doesn't forget His people. Now, Sarah had laughed before with kind of a, God's going to do what? This is not the same kind of laughter here. God has made me laugh and all who hear will laugh with me. She also said, Who would have said to Abraham, verse 7, that Sarah would nurse children? For I have born him a son in his old age. Sarah has given birth to kings and princes. It's exactly what God said. Through her body, through Sarah's body, she's going to produce kings. Kings are going to come from her. Sarah is this old woman who has produced seed. this whole section here. I know we've re-emphasized that almost to the point of getting a dead horse here, but I do need you to understand that. These are real people. This is not just a book that we're reading. These are real people. People just like us. Flesh and blood. This is a 90-year-old woman having babies. This is a 100-year-old man producing children. These are real people. You need to remember that when we read the text. This is inspired to encourage us that God takes 100-year-old and 90-year-old people and uses them for His purposes and for His glory. Whatever ailments you have, whatever limitations you have, whether you're 15 or whether you're 150, nobody that old. However old you are, God is still going to use you in some capacity. And of course, we might rightly say that we are children of Abraham inasmuch as we follow in his faith. Sarah has produced us. Metaphorically speaking, because she's produced a seed. Of course, we know that that seed is Christ. And that's who we are born into. That's where our standing is. That's where we stand today is in Christ. Humanly speaking, that comes through this vessel, that is the most unlikely vessel there is, 90 year old woman. She produces seed. All right. Verse 8, on the day that Isaac was weaned, the child grew. Abraham made a great feast on the same day that Isaac was weaned. Most Jewish commentators go through a long laundry list of who was invited. The scriptures don't care. They're not interested in who was invited. Some have said that Shem, who was maybe alive, may have been invited. Who knows? Maybe Melchizedek was. Who knows who came to this feast? For our purposes, irrelevant. The guest list, irrelevant. Doesn't matter who was there. Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is verse 9. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing and laughing. Uh-oh. Not the same kind of laughter, is it? You can imagine this 14 or 15-year-old child, this 14-year-old, kind of scoffing and saying, this is the promised seed? This is the one whom my father's been talking about for all these years to say that God's going to do something? See, this is the kind of scorn. This is not just, oh, I'm poking fun at him because his robe's the wrong color or his hat's crooked or whatever. This is scoffing at God's promise. You need to see that. This is not just a matter of children poking fun at each other like I hear my kids and your children do with each other. It's not the same thing. This child is laughing, scoffing. This is what Abraham, my father, has been waiting for. This child. This two or three year old. He's weaned. He's probably no more than two. This is it. This brat. This is what it is. This is where the promise is fulfilled in this two year old. He's just barely got teeth in his mouth? What are you kidding? This is exactly what he's doing. He's scoffing. Therefore, verse 10, Sarah says to Abraham, Get out, cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac. And the matter was very displeasing in Abraham's life because of his son. Now, here's where I mentioned a minute ago where Abraham doesn't, humanly speaking, he doesn't seem to be too wise because he knows, and God has already said that this child, Isaac, this two-year-old, the one who just learned how to chew, you know, meat, he's weaned now, he's the promised seed. And yet his 14-year-old, who is not the promised seed, he's already been told that twice, by the way. This Ishmael, I'm going to bless him because he's your son, but he is not the promised seed. The promises are not coming through him. He has the privilege of being there. Understand that. He's circumcised, he's in Abraham's house, he has the privilege of being there, and he's scoffing and laughing. And Sarah says, kick him and his mother out. This is still Abraham's wife, whom chapter 16 says that Sarah gave him gave her to him for wife and his son. And Abraham says, well, I think I'd rather let him stay. Abraham's not very smart, is he? He's taking this child who's scoffing and laughing at the promise of God and saying, well, I'd rather have him stay here. This is kind of significant because Abraham is not really thinking very wisely about this. He's very displeased. I mean, he loves his son. We shouldn't despise that. But Sarah, once again, is trying to run off Hagar and trying to run off his son, and they're making fun. Certainly Ishmael is making fun of the promised seed. And he's displeasing to Abraham's sight. Where's Abraham's head? His affection should be in it. All of his focus should be on Isaac. Isaac is the important one. We've been waiting for this moment for, what, nine chapters, 10 chapters, 25 years? We've been waiting for this. And then it comes to it, and he says, well, I'd rather not kick out Ishmael, too. Can we kind of keep them both here? Of course, this is the whole point of this chapter. No, you can't. Verse 12. But God said to Abraham, do not let it be displeasing on your side because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice for in Isaac, your seed shall be called. That's only like the second or third time he's told him that. In Isaac, your seed will be called. Yet I will also make a nation of the son of the bondwoman because he is your seed. So God basically says, listen, Sarah is displeased with us. That's right. This is correct. I'm blessing this human decision. Now, understand also that Sarah has kind of taken upon herself an authority that doesn't really belong to her. Abraham's the head of the household. Abraham decides who stays and goes. What she should have said is, Abraham, I saw that your son, not my son, your son was making fun of our son, Isaac. You need to kick them out. She kind of takes this authority and says, you need to throw them out now. Not giving you suggestions. She says, you need to throw them out. You need to throw them out now. God says, that is the correct decision. I am blessing this. Humanly speaking, whatever the motivations of Sarah were, Sarah probably did not have in mind any of the spiritual implications of this at all. In fact, the indication is not at all. She just said, this son is not going to be heir of mine. I don't want Ishmael to end up with anything that's supposed to be Isaac's. Isaac's supposed to get what? Everything. He's the oldest son. You catch this? Isaac is the oldest son. He's two. Ishmael's 14. He's the oldest son. This is why this is significant. Who's going to get all of Isaac's stuff? The oldest? No. Not chronologically. Esau is the oldest. He's not going to end up with it either. By the way, is Abraham the oldest? Not that we know of. God is content to work with, you know, second-last children. I know that. I'm an oldest child, so I kind of feel bad here. I understand, at least humanly speaking. I sympathize with these guys. But God is not working with whom we would expect Him to work with. This was colossal. In the Old Testament, in these times, the oldest son got everything. And even when we come to the law, we see that the oldest son amongst many gets that extra portion. If you have four sons, you divide up things five ways, and he gets two portions. Two-fifths go to the oldest. So the oldest son is the most important. But the oldest son is not the most important. God determines who's the most important. And Ishmael's got to be thrown out. Do not let it be displeasing in your sight. because of the bomb woman in Isaac, your seed shall be called. And but he also says, I'm going to bless Ishmael as well. Now, remember what we said earlier, going back all the way eight weeks ago, if you can remember that far back here. Those of you, hopefully, can remember that far back. It's clear in my mind because Abraham has been separated from his family. Actually, he's been separated from his nation. Get out of Ur, go to Haran. Get out of Haran, leave your family. So he's out of his nation. He's a stranger in a strange land. He gets out of his family. You need to leave your father's house. So Terah stays back at Haran. And then he and Lot travel down. And in Judges 13, Lot splits away from him. And now we see that even within his own family, you need to throw out one of your sons as well. So Abraham continually is separated from everybody, even members of his own household. It's fair to say that Lot was a member of his household. And then he gets separated even more. Not only is Lot gone, now one of his own sons is now gone. And in chapter 25, we're going to see that his other sons that come from this Keturah person, He gives them gifts and sends them away as well. Nobody is left. Abraham is his household, at least in terms of his own relations, are fitting further and further away. All of them are going away. Abraham is by himself. And him and Sarah and Isaac are really all that's left. They're separated. God does not work with large numbers. God does not lead large numbers. What does God tell to Gideon when he's getting ready to go? You have too many men. Get rid of the men. You got too many men. Too many people. Separates them out. No, you still don't have enough. You still have too many. You need to get rid of them. You got this Midianite army that's so big, it's a multitude, you can't even count them. Oh, by the way, 300? Yeah, that's probably a good number. That's a good number. Now I can do my work. God is doing the same thing. He constantly does the same thing. He throws everyone out, and then He does His work. And that's kind of what we see when we come to the New Testament. God clears out the house, and He leaves room for what? Twelve. Okay, now I can do my work. I've got 120 net room, now we can really change the world. That's not how we think, is it? Man, we've got to get a whole army of people so we can do what we need to do. I love the story of Jonathan. I could talk about Jonathan this morning, where Jonathan says, Armor Bearer, let's go and get these guys. There's only two of us. Yeah, but let's go get these guys, because God doesn't work in big numbers. So let's go take these guys on an uphill battle. If you read it carefully, they're uphill. They're on the downhill, they're going up. Let's go take these guys. You guys should be, you boys should be really interested in this battle tactics. Two guys go up against, you know, the Philistines are like, we're going to go down and get these guys. Fighting uphill is not an easy thing. And yet Jonathan takes them down. His armor bearer just follows and stabs these guys. Okay? I know. But that's how God works. God doesn't work with many. God works with few. We're not a big congregation. God can do earth-shattering things with our congregation. if he wants to. That's why God doesn't need the megachurch movement. He doesn't need this seeker-friendly stuff. He doesn't need that. See, we've said we've got to have big numbers to do what we need to do so that people can be impressed with what we're doing. God says, I don't need any of that. It's not that the seeker-friendly movement doesn't have some good intention somewhere. It's just that we don't understand how God works anymore because we say we've got to go do all this stuff and get a bunch of people so we can have congregations of 15,000 people and people will notice us. That's not what people are noticing. I work with people all the time. They're not even church goers. I said, make it church movement. What's that? That's real church. That's not real church. I've had people who don't even go to church and say, that's not real church. Do you consider that real church? And there are people who do go to churches like that. So I'm sure it's real church. It doesn't seem like real church to me, from what I've heard. It's church for people who don't want to do church. That's what the billboards say, right? We expect that God works a certain way, operates a certain way to do things on our terms, with our limitations, with our kind of formula and plan. And we see that God tosses all that out and says, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to separate you down so that there's nobody left. And all of the promises are on this two-year-old child, whom your other son is laughing at, scorning. And Abraham has the task of raising this child up, being a hundred-year-old man. Verse 14, Abraham rises up early in the morning, gives her some bread, gives her some water, gives it to Hagar, and sends them on their way. It seems almost like cruelty. I mean, it almost seems like cruelty. You'd think that common courtesy would send them with a small caravan or something. Give them a camel, a lot of water, something. Loaf of bread, jug of water, tip, bread and water. See you later. In the wilderness. They're in the south. They're in the south. If you know anything about the region, this is just north of Egypt. This is not exactly hospitable, plantable land. This is a wilderness. When we say wilderness, we mean like desert. This is out in the middle of nowhere. We've seen movies, you know, pictures of the heat rising. This is what we're talking about. Abraham says, take your bread, take your water, take your son, my son, and leave. And he does this based on the commandment of God. Now, this is the one thing that Abraham continually comes back to. He doesn't always do it very well, and he doesn't always think very clearly through these things, but he does act faithfully. God says, throw them out. Next morning, he throws them out. We're going to see the same thing in the next chapter. Abraham, you need to take Isaac, the son that you love, the other son I threw out, the other sons that are gone, this one son, you need to go up on the mountain and you need to kill him. So Abraham does. He gets up in the morning, I'm going to go kill him. Abraham has no intention of killing him. This is one thing Abraham does correctly, is that he trusts God. And so he trusts that God is going to bless Ishmael. Ishmael's not going to die in the desert. It might seem that way, but Abraham knows, I'm going to make a great nation of him, because he is also your seed. Not the seed, but he is a seed. Lots of people in the Middle East can claim descent from Abraham, probably rightfully so. That's not the seed, though. The seed has already come, and he's sitting on the right hand of God. That seed has come. Whatever we might claim, whatever people might claim in terms of, well, I can trace my lineage back to Abraham. So what? So what? We claim our descendants, humanly speaking, through whomever we want to. The important part is that we look to God for the hope of that. All right, verses 14 and following here, we see that Hagar goes out into the wilderness. The water is used up fairly quickly. She doesn't want to see the boy die. She places him in one place and goes to the other side. She says, I don't want to see him die. This is kind of interesting to me, because they almost treat him like he's this baby in a basket. He's 14 years old. So it is kind of interesting how Ishmael seems to be somewhat helpless as well. He just kind of sits there. What am I going to do? I guess I'm just going to die here. And Hagar says, I'm going to go on the other side over here. And the angel comes down and says, what ails you? What's this crying about? What are you crying about? Angel doesn't, I mean, it's merciful. You can't be wrong, but it just seems kind of like, what's the problem? You're out in the wilderness with no water. What's the problem? What is the problem? We don't know. So God hears the angel of God call to Hagar out of heaven. Fear not, God has heard the voice of the lad. The boy's crying too, by the way. We don't see him crying, but he is crying. God has heard Ishmael crying. God's going to make him into a great nation. Get up and look with your eyes. You missed off that well of water that's over there. She goes over, gives him some water, and all is well. And we see that we have all kind of compressed history in all of about two verses. Where he grows up in the desert, he becomes an archer, and he gets married to an Egyptian woman. Hagar basically goes home and says, I'll get him a nice Egyptian woman. So at this point, Ishmael is gone from the covenant. He's out. He's gone. He's married a foreigner. He's left the house. He's gone. He's no longer part of the house of Abraham. We're going to see him specifically one more time. And that's going to be at the death of Abraham. Sorry for those. I don't want to ruin it for you. We're going to see him there again. Going to come back. So he's gone though, he's cut off from the land. Now, verse 22 and following seems to be an interesting follow up to this whole section here. Why is this in here? covenant with Abimelech. Abimelech comes, and Pichol, the commander of his army, and they speak to Abraham saying, God is with you in all that you do. Now swear to me by God that you will not deal falsely with me, with my offspring, or with my posterity. And according to the kindness that I have done to you, you will do to me into the land which you have dwelt. That's where Abraham is. Abraham is dwelling in the land of the Philistines. And the king, Abimelech, and his commander of his army say, you need to be kind to us. Now this is a really weird thing, humanly speaking. Why would the king and the commander of his army come to this wandering Bedouin and say, you need to deal true with me. Don't deal falsely with me. Why is this? Why is the king of the land coming to some stranger? It's like, you know, the president of the United States going to some compound out in the middle of nowhere and say, look, you need to deal rightly with me. You're the king. You're holding all the cards. Well, no, he's not holding the cards. And I think you see, we've already seen Abimelech's humility and his faith to some extent, his righteousness externally. It's manifested here again. Abraham's already lied to him. Abraham nearly got him killed. He's not coming because of Abraham. He's coming because he fears God. You're a prophet. Remember that's what God called him in chapter 20? Abraham is my prophet. He's my servant. He's the one who reveals God. So what does this king do? You need to deal truly with me. Don't deal falsely with me. Don't deal falsely with my people. Don't deal falsely with my children after you. You need to deal truly with them. The implied implication is that they trust God. They don't trust Abraham very well, though. There's no indication they trust Abraham. Abraham's given them no reason to trust him whatsoever. Oh yeah, she's my sister. He nearly died. You are a dead man unless you send this woman back to her husband. And he's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lord, I did this in the innocence of my hands. And he said, oh, I know that you did. That's why I withheld you. So what does he do here? He comes back to Abraham after the child is born. And he said, God is with you. The birth is probably a miraculous event enough where the king says, hey, God really is with this guy. And here's proof of it. Not only was he about to kill us and wipe us out, and God came to visit me. Now we have this 100-year-old man whom he's just given, he's just had this child. And it's been two years later. That woman, that 20-year-old woman, they've had children. God is with this guy. Abraham, don't deal falsely with me. Don't deal falsely with my posterity, with my children. goes on. I think there's a very important lesson in terms of how we deal with the world and how the world wants to deal with us sometimes. We need to be faithful. We need to be honest. Abraham was not honest, but they came to him because of God. We might find ourselves in a situation someday where people are coming to us not because of us, I mean, the church is derided in many cases because of our own actions. But many times people want to deal with us because of God. They know that there's faithfulness. They know that there's something there. It's not in us in particular. And I don't think that Abimelech is coming to Abraham because he has a great respect for Abraham. I think he has a great respect for God and he's a great fear of God. So they hash out some detail. Abraham says, I swear I will do it. And Abraham rebuked Abimelech because of a well of which Abraham's servants had seized. Basically, Abraham dug a well. Abimelech's servant says, this is our land. They took it from him. And Abraham said, you know what? You guys, if you want to clear the air, let's clear the air. Your men tried to take some wells, and they have taken some wells. And Abimelech's like, hold on a minute. First time I heard of it, don't know anything about it. They're yours. And Abraham pays for them. He gives them these. He took sheep, oxen, gave them to Bimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. They made a promise. And Abraham said, seven of you lambs of the flock by themselves. And Bimelech said, what does this mean? We don't need to look for any huge significance. He just takes seven lambs, sets them aside. What's this mean? It means that you remember that these wells belong to me. I paid for them. And Bimelech said, it's yours. You're in my land. I invited you to stay. Chapter 20, stay in the land. Abraham did. I dug the wells. These are mine. And he does. He swears an oath. They made a covenant of Beersheba, and so he goes back to the land of the Philistines. Abraham plants a tree there, calls upon the name of the Lord. He trusts God. It's a way of recognizing God. Worships God. Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines many days. Now we have about 30 seconds, but I'm going to go over because we're all allowed to do that. Turn with me to Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4, verse 21. I saved it to the very end because I wasn't sure how long it would take to get through this. Galatians 4, 21. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman and the other a free woman. This is why, by the way, that the scriptures don't tell us about all of these children Abraham had until the end of his life, because the two are the most important here. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh. Ishmael and he of the free woman through promise Isaac which things are symbolic for these are the two covenants the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage which is Hagar for Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and Corresponds to Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children, but the Jerusalem above is is free, which is the mother of Saul. For it is written, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor. For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what does Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of a bondwoman will not be heir with the son of a free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." The shortest way that I can say this, what Paul is saying here, is that Ishmael and Isaac represent two ways of going about getting things that you want from God. One is through the flesh, one is through promise. Brothers, Paul says to the Galatians, you and I are children of promise. The children of the flesh is Judaism. You cannot earn your salvation. This is what the whole book of Galatians is about. Why would you return to the law? It is bondage. Judaism is bondage. And he's not setting up the Jews to throw them out, per se, because Paul is a Jew. He's not that foolish. But he is saying, to the extent that you follow Judaism, throw it out. Judaism has no part in the church. We toss around the term Judeo-Christian like they're connected. And Paul here says they are not connected. One gave birth to the other, in a sense. The Old Testament does give birth to the church. But Judaism, as a system, is thrown out. It's gone. God kicked it out. It has no longer any part with us. Worst righteousness? That's what Judaism was. That's not Old Testament religion, by the way. That's why Paul does not say Jews are thrown out. Old Testament religion is one of faith. Isaac was born of faith, of promise, not of flesh. You understand that, right? Isaac was not born through the flesh. He was born of promise. That's what Paul says. Ishmael is the same. The reason I don't think this impacts us very well is because we don't understand the tension in the first century between the Jews and the Gentiles. This is huge. Paul is saying the Judaistic system, out, gone, kicked out. Corresponds, you are all a bunch of Ishmaelites. It's just about as devastating when Jesus told his detractors, saying, you're not children of Abraham, you're children of the devil, your father. It's a wonder they didn't fall over backwards. They probably did. No wonder they wanted to kill him. You're not promising. You're not children of promise. You're children of flesh. You have nothing to do with me. Why? Because you have not come to these things, and you've not held on to these promises by faith. You've not held on to the promise. You've held on to them by your own efforts. All right. That's not all I have to say. But today it will be. So thank you.