Genesis 21:8-21

There is no safer bet than entrusting ourselves and those we love to the grace of God.

I was maybe 7. Over at a friend's house; I think in the garage or basement, but I was drawn to this contraption. Churning, whirling, the sound of crumbling. A turning bowl with a lid and motor. Fascinated, I asked “what is it?”

A rock tumbler, polisher. My friend and his dad had a cool rock collection, if I remember right. Smooth, shiny, brilliant rocks of wonderful colors. They collected them from their travels/vacations. But it turns out, the rocks didn’t come that way - in the finished state. They had to be roughed up first!

The tumbler did that. Over days, weeks, the rocks and gravel, and sand turned and turned wearing away the rough edges. Over time the surface starts to smooth, the colors are revealed, and rock, once nondescript and jagged, is no a beautiful prize.

How I wanted a rock tumbler!

While there are some who wrongly suggest that when you believe in Jesus you are squirted out shiny, beautiful; lasting faith is formed in the tumbler, where the edges are rubbing against hard things. Where the force of life and time do the work of polishing.

Reservoir is for those in the tumbler. Some are shinier than others!

Coming to Genesis 21, we see some of the rocks in Abraham’s tumbler. He’s been through it already. 100 years old, he has fought wars, amassed wealth, lied about his wife being his sister (half truth), he has seen God in dramatic fashion. He’s been promised a glorious promise, and here he experiences the pain of sending a child away. And there is much more to come.

In another story of Hagar and Ishmael, long ago outlined to fall on this week in our preaching calendar, we find comforting and challenging truth.

There is no safer bet than entrusting ourselves and those we love to the grace of God.

I want to essentially break this into two movements this morning. Searching the Scripture for gospel truth first, then pulling some parental truth and application from it as well. Apropos for Mother’s Day.

Let’s set the scene. Are we familiar with the players? Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Hagar and Ishamel.

Abraham was promised by God to be the father of nations. He is faithful, God covenanted with him and he has delivered.

The baby is born. All the waiting almost 20 years after first hearing the promise, after trying to take things into their own hands by having a child with his concubine Hagar; God said Sarah would bear a child and she has.

Huge movement. A pivotal moment. That Scripture gives it a mere 8 verses seems sus. Come on! Roll out the celebration!

But the nuggets come after he is weaned (2 or 3) and a brother’s mocking, and a woman’s scorn.

Gospel Truth: God’s Grace Goes Further Than We Think

Genesis 21:6 “And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” (ESV)

After the weaning of Isaac, the promised heir, a great feast. This is a proud dad moment. Makes mom cook!

It is at the feast that something savage happens. Sarah sees “the son of Hagar” born to Abraham, strangely his name is not used here. Sarah sees Ishmael (oldest son of Abraham), ESV says “laughing” but it is actually “mocking.”

Doing the math, Ishmael is 16 or 17 years old. Practically “man” age in biblical times. But he has spent the first 13 years of his life thinking, along with everyone else, that he would be Abraham’s heir. Then God reminds them of the promise so he along with the men of the camp is circumcised and awaited the arrival of this kid. Now that he is here, and celebrated, Ishamael is just the slave girl’s son again.

Sarah, well she is not having it. This punk mocking her baby boy. I get it. “Cast out this slave woman with her son.” No competition for Isaac.

An aside: I have never liked Sarah. Her attitude, the way she treats people. As a pastor I thought I couldn’t say that, but I am entering my honest era!

She goes to Abraham, “I want your son out of my life.” And it’s displeasing to Abraham. Rightly so. He is a father.

“Abraham is the staid father figure, going about the rituals of fatherhood in formal manner, while the portrait of Sarah is more human. The expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael echoes the earlier episode of Hagar’s flight when she became pregnant with Ishmael. Here, too, we find the motifs of conflict between wives occasioned by Hagar’s offspring; Abraham caught between two raw-boned women; a decision based on expediency. We need to read between the lines to catch the probable human motivations at various points: Ishmael may have been taunting Isaac as the initial provocation (vv. 8–9); Sarah acts as the guardian of Isaac’s interests as the rightful heir (v. 10); Abraham is displeased at the prospect of expelling Hagar and Ishmael because of the natural feelings of a father for a wife and son (v. 11);” Literary

But God will take care of him. Genesis 21:12–13 “But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. [13] And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.” (ESV)

Now, there are lots of times in the Old Testament when this happens but we can still get our categories off. We can think that God only cares for those descended from Isaac. “God’s people.” We are inclined to gate-keep and restrict. God’s care, and provision often goes further however.

Even if it’s just the common grace of air to breathe and a sun to shine upon us, his graciousness is lavished on us compared to what is deserved.

Humanity having turned from God since the garden, needing someone to make it right, the seed of Eve to crush the serpent’s head. Where the line of Abraham leads.

There is weather for sin, but his desire is for the image-bearer.

Here it is hinted at in his provision for Ishmael, who because of Abraham will become a nation himself. His story won’t end.

“The story of Ishmael is finished for the present so that full attention may be given to Isaac, but Ishmael is not outside the scope of God’s purposes, though his destiny is different from that of Isaac. As the writer says, God was with the lad.” Joyce G. Baldwin

God shows compassion to the marginalized and that His plans encompass everyone, even those we might overlook.

The passage foreshadows Christ's ultimate provision for the outcast and the marginalized, as seen in His ministry on earth. Just as God heard Hagar and gave her water in the desert, Jesus offers living water to all who are thirsty and in need of salvation.

It is a picture of the gospel; grace going further that we expect. Jesus, fully God, fully man, came to live in perfect obedience to the Father and died in our place, as a sacrificial lamb, meeting what our sin deserved.

All those who believe will be saved. It’s why we are all here!

He came to the Jews first, but it is a salvation for all image-bearers that will believe.

Luke 24:45–47 “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, [46] and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, [47] and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (ESV)

You still have to come, but no one is too far off!

Prayer for all people… 1 Timothy 2:3–4 “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, [4] who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (ESV)

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (ESV)

Who do you love that is far off? Pray for them. Entrust them to the grace of God, that they may reach repentance.

There is more here.

Parental Truth: You Can Entrust Your Children to the Lord

Obedient to the Lord, and his wife… Abraham packed some bread and a skin of water and sent Hagar and her son away. They wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

Hagar is Egyptian, likely headed back to her people, but it is a long journey, through arid terrain with few wells to get water from.

The water runs out. Hagar puts the child under one of the bushes… Pause here.

He is a teenager. Taken by itself in the language makes him seem younger, smaller. Weaker. But how many of you have hiked with a teenager?!

Evenso, someone of any age without water in this situation would be in trouble. Maybe he had his mother drink more of the water out of care for her.

He is weak, she puts him under a bush and she goes a bowshot away and cries out to God. “Don’t let me see the death of my child.” And she wept.

Some of us have been where Hagar was. I have been there this week.

As a pastor I have been with some of you when you had similar conversations with doctors but I wasn’t prepared for it myself.

Our youngest, Adia, without an inciting event, had an aneurysm and rupture of the main artery to her intestines. Once they finally figured out what was wrong they recognized the procedure to fix it would be complicated because she is small and young, and they didn’t know to what extent the colon would be damaged, if the blood supply had stopped.

But she has a genetic condition that affects connective tissue and arteries that made the repair extremely dangerous.

Standing in the hall outside her ICU room with the surgeon hearing the reality of the situation… and it was as if the floor just dropped from under us.

The things that go through your head…

Stacy and I were sustained by your prayers, by your care for Iona and Ewen.

You know when you negotiate with God; “If you do this… get us through… I will do this..” Well I didn’t even have anything to bargain with!

The feeling of having no control.

So we lifted up our voices and wept. Asking the lord to have mercy.

And he did. Praise God.

What struck me in this story though was that it was the voice of the boy that God heard. Now, that doesn’t mean he didn’t hear Hagar’s prayer. He speaks to her in response. But I think it is stated clearly to help us.

Ishmael means “God hears.” Genesis 21:17 “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? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. (ESV)

“What troubles you?!”

God hearing the voice of the boy where he is should be a comfort for us. As parents we play a huge role. Training our children up in the way they should go. Showing them Jesus. Our need for him. Reliance on him. Love for him.

But part of their story and ours is meant to be our entrusting them to the Lord. To his plan, his wisdom, providence.

That might mean all kinds of things for us. Stop pushing in certain directions, start pulling in others. But learning, in the rock tumbler, to believe it all for ourselves and them as well.

That grace goes farther than we think.

That he hears them. Is present with them. Cherishes them more than we do. That he grieves the brokenness of the world that affects them too.

Realizing that Psalm 139 applies to them.

Psalm 139:13–16

[13] For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

[14] I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

[15] My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

[16] Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them. (ESV)

And as we do this, not every answer will be yes. There will be pain. Loss. Heartache. And a God who invites our honesty and our lament. Still, he hears, he holds, he so loves.

Abraham had pain of loss.

“Such is the way God works out his promises in the lives of his people. Pain is normally the channel through which divine blessing and favor flows. For it is pain that brings us to truly trust in the Lord. It is adversity that convinces us of the emptiness of the things the world runs after. Suffering is God’s fatherly way of drawing us to himself.” GTB

And because this is true we can cherish our children. We can show them Jesus.

For Hagar, God provided water, she gave him a drink and he grew up and took a wife from Egypt.

God’s exhortation to Hagar works as application for us on this Mother’s Day.

Genesis 21:18 “Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” (ESV)

Lift up: Give them yourself, help them to thrive, pray for them.

Hold fast: Take them to the word, to Jesus, show them the value of community, through the thick and thin of this crazy world.

Frederick Buechner writes: “We believe in God — such as it is, we have faith. . . . We work and goof off, we love and dream, we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just window dressing or a rabbit’s foot or fire insurance, it is because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich human compost.”

There is no safer bet than entrusting ourselves and those we love to the grace of God.

Edges worn, the shine is coming through, together in this tumbler of life. I think the Lord is uncovering some beautiful gems.

Thank you for tumbling with me.