And it's taken from the 21st chapter of the book of Genesis. And we'll read verses 15 through 20. Beginning in verse 15, it says, when the water and the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off about the distance of a bowshot, where she said, let me not look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy and the angel of God called to Hegar from heaven and said to her, what troubles you Hegar fear not? For God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Up, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand. For I will make him into a great nation. 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. And God was with the boy and he grew up and lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. May God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of his holy word. This is an interesting portion of scripture. In fact, as you begin in the 15th verse there and you just kind of read it, it reminds you of the opening of a movie, if not the middle of a movie, that something has gone on and something is not right. So what I want to do in looking at what we have here in these verses, I want to begin with a movie where it opens with this desert scene and a woman and her child, obviously in a state of desperation, sort of a backstory. So we want to begin by looking at the context that gives us these circumstances and then we'll look at the circumstances themselves. So the context of what's taking place here in these verses actually takes us back and you should go a number of places but specifically to verses eight through 10. And of course this is in the immediate aftermath and the opening actually of chapter 21 is when Sarah gives birth to Isaac, the child that God had promised them. And so verse eight and also at this point Isaac has been weaned. And so there's this festive occasion that's taking place. All of the household are celebrating for this long awaited child who has now has been born by Sarah herself and him being weaned is an occasion for celebration. And this is an unusual delivery. This is an unusual child, a child that has been promised by God. So while everyone is celebrating, we know that having misunderstood God's promise that Sarah had recommended Hagar, her handmaiden, to go in with Abraham and to produce a child. And legally that child would be both hers and Abraham's. And so when at this point the child that had been born by Hagar is already a little child. And so when the celebration is going on because God has delivered his promise through Sarah and Abraham, we are told that the child laughs. And Sarah is a little upset about this, she's not pleased. And so beginning in verse eight we see Sarah's response. It says, and the child grew and wean. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was wean. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham laughing. So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be with my son Isaac. So that's the context that an Abraham, now he really is befuddled because the only reason that he bore child through Hagar is because Sarah told him to. And so now she's mad at him and he's got two sons here. And so he's told to put this woman and her son out. And so Abraham, in fact the scripture goes on to say that the thing displeased Abraham. And but yet the Lord tells him to listen to your wife and go ahead and put the bond woman out and her son. So the context, the immediate historical context of this passage that we have in verses 15 through 20 is this celebration which prompted the anger of Sarah towards her servant and her son and put Abraham in a position where he's told to put the child out, that in other words get your child out of here and end the woman that bore him and go. That's the immediate historical context. But there's a theological context as well. A theological context from two vantage points. Genesis chapter three verse 15 and God tells the serpent, I will put enmity between your seed and the seed of the woman. And so in that instance the two seed conflict which travels throughout all of scripture, two seeds being the seed of the woman and ultimately leading to the promised Messiah and the seed of the serpent which is all of those who are born under the curse of Adam that God has not chosen to identify in the seed of the woman. So that's the macro theological context. That's the big picture context. There's also a doctrinal context here because the same passage where Sarah tells Abraham to put out the bond woman and her son finds its way into the New Testament. In the book of Galatians Paul cites this and he talks about, again the separation in terms of religion, worshiping God or seeking to be justified before God on the basis of the law, in which case he says then there are two covenants, there are two women or two mothers, two sons and two mountains. The two covenants is a covenant of works versus a covenant of grace. The two women are hagar and Sarah. The two mountains is Sinai and Zion. The two sons are Abraham or Isaac and Ishmael and he says the one, the one group is in bondage. The woman, her son, the woman hagar, her son Ishmael, Mount Sinai and the covenant of works all represent bondage. So therefore on the other side of it the woman, the free woman who is Sarah, Mount Zion associated with an event that we see in the very next chapter, chapter 22. The son of the free woman who is Isaac and the covenant represented by this group is a covenant of grace in which he says everyone who is in Christ is in conjunction with that. So we have the macro theological context but we have the broader and actually the more practical theological context of this event. What we actually see is the separation of the two seeds. The seed of the woman represented by Sarah and Isaac and the seed of the serpent represented by hagar and Ishmael. So the context that leads to this situation is part of the conflict that God prophesies in Genesis 3.15 and really it is the bane of human history, the conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Paul, again, alludes to this in Galatians chapter 4. So the point is the context of this passage, the backstory is that hagar and her son are associated with sin and bondage. That's the immediate context. Well, that leads us then secondly to the circumstances that are set forth here. Having been told that she's to leave the party and not just leave the party and go to your room but get out of my house. So at this point we see the circumstances that hagar who represents the seed of the serpent and there's no place in the scriptures that indicate that hagar or her son are ever grafted into the body of Christ. So we don't know if they are but here are the immediate circumstances. Number one, she's been alienated. She's been alienated. She's alienated from the affections of the man that she had a child for. She's been alienated from the home that she's lived in and she's been alienated from the land in which she lived. So she's in a state of alienation. But secondly, we see that she's in a desperate state because the scriptures tell us that Abraham gave her a small serving of bread and gave her some water but it was no match for the desert that she found herself in and that's really the way the scene opens here that the bread for all intents and purposes is either gone or it's on its way out and there is no sign that she will get any more bread and the water is gone. So there's a sense of desperation. But thirdly, we see that she is near death. In fact, if she doesn't die, she is convinced that her son will die. In fact, the passage opens up with her so desperate that she is so convinced that her son is very much on the very brinks of death that she wants to look away from him because she doesn't have the heart to look at her only son actually die before her eyes. The context is that this is not a part of the blessed nation. We see that in the macro theological context as well as in the micro theological context that, again, as we see Paul interpreting these events and these individuals, he associates it with bondage and death. So one sense, you could say that, well, this is what God is talking about and since they are not a part of the promised family, then whatever happens to them, they deserve it. But that brings us to the third thing and that's what we see in verse 17 that in this circumstance, in spite of this context, whether it's the macro theological context or the micro theological context, in spite of the circumstances that there is a sense of desperation, there is alienation, there is death in the air, God speaks up and God intervenes. And so what we see in verse 17 is that God expresses or demonstrates compassion towards this woman and her son whom he says he is one of the representatives of those that will have his head crushed by the foot or the heel of the seed of the woman. In other words, and we see this fleshed out, of course when we look in the book of Revelation, when the horror of Babylon is thrown or the beast is thrown into the furnace, everyone that's associated with Babylon gets destroyed. And certainly Babylon as portrayed in the book of Revelation points to the seed of the serpent. So the seed of the serpent gets in the end what God said it would get in Genesis 3.15. But it's in this situation that God demonstrates compassion. Again, look at verse 17 that at this point when Hagar is convinced that her son is about to die that God speaks up. And so in verse 17 it says, 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. Now one of the things that I find interesting about the compassion of God demonstrated here is that it parallels very closely to the scene that we see in the very next chapter. In chapter 22 when Abraham is about to offer up his son Isaac as the Lord and it's interesting that the Lord says, offer up your son, the one that you love, take him out and get ready to sacrifice him and Abraham is ready to do it. And just as he's ready to offer up his son, in other words, he sees death in his son, an angel of the Lord speaks from heaven and says, stay your hand. And in the same language, the same imagery as Hagar is prepared to see her son die and is convinced that he will die an angel speaks from heaven and speaks on behalf of God and says that God sees you and God hears the voice of your son. And so therefore don't worry about it. In fact, he tells her, do not fear. In other words, here's what we see and it's almost a mind-blowing concept that God has already destined this offspring of Abraham, this son of the flesh, this work of the law, God has already destined him for eternal damnation. But in this moment of time and in this moment of history, God shows compassion. And he shows compassion both to Hagar and to her son. The compassion that he extends to Hagar is he comforts the heart, the broken heart of this mother who feels that she's about to lose her son. In fact, Moses in writing this gives us extra details, kind of points us forward in the years and tells us that eventually what's going to happen to this boy is he's going to grow up, he's going to go to Egypt and his mother who thinks that she's about to lose him will be able to find him a wife. That's compassion. And so we see God extending compassion both to Hagar and to Ishmael in that she doesn't allow Hagar he doesn't allow Hagar to see her only son die. So we see the context even in its macro sense in the macro context or the immediate context, we see that even though she's been despised by the woman that she has served been kicked out of her house in the macro theological context that her and her son are a part of the seed of the serpent and will be crushed by the seed of the woman and the immediate or the micro theological context even though she's associated with bondage and death God in that moment of time demonstrates compassion. That brings us to a fourth thing that we see here and that is God extends and promises to Ishmael. Common grace. He extends to him common grace and verses 19 through 20. We see what God speaks of concerning this boy. He says lift up or then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. That's common grace. Now when we know that, if again, if she's not included in that generation that which would seek coverage and to seek salvation in the seed of the woman, then she will go to a place that Jesus says there is no water but here God opened her eyes so that she can see some water and in seeing this water, we are told that she is instructed to be, that she is enabled to give her son a drink and she is able to be filled. So in other words, God extends to this pagan woman water in a miraculous way, where she is able to have her immediate needs met and she's able to sustain the life of her son. That's grace but it's not saving grace. It's common grace. God not only shows common grace in that he allows her and her son to have their thirst relieve but we also see that God says in verse 20 and God was with the boy and he grew up and he lived in the wilderness and he became an expert with the bow. In other words, he had some natural skills that enabled him to provide for his family and perhaps even help others with his expertise with the bow. In other words, here's what we see even though his eternal destiny is that he will be condemned forever. He and his mother but in this instance, God demonstrates common grace to those who are the seed of the serpent. And we know that historically what will take place is that the Ishmaelites, who are the offspring of Ishmael will not only be a problem for Israel in fact not just the Ishmaelites but the media nights, they will constantly be a thorn in the side of the children of promise because God says I will put tension between you and then we know that also there will be false religion that will come from the seed of the serpent but yet God shows compassion and God demonstrates common grace.
Well that brings me to the final thing that I wanna look at here. And brothers and sisters, I think in our generation, given what we see around us, given the rhetoric that we hear from religious and non-religious quarters concerning those who do not call upon the name of Jesus. I would suggest fifthly that the compassion that is shown by God and the common grace that is extended by God is given to us as a reflection of how we ought to live out the second table of the law. In other words, what God demonstrates what God puts on display in a direct way with the offspring, with the seed of the serpent where he shows compassion, where he gives abilities, where he grants life and he even tells Abraham, don't worry about your son, he's not gonna inherit the promise, the promise that Isaac will get, but he'll be a father of a great nation in the way that nations measure themselves. And so brothers and sisters, here's what I'm saying that we have been nurtured. And people are talking about what's happened in the election and the fear that came from one candidate, but that's not the only place where I heard fear. You see I've heard all kinds of fear and hateful language that has come from people of faith when it comes to people that are the offspring of Ishmael. And so we have become prejudice and blinded in our thinking, in dealing with them so much so that we see a religion before we see a person. And here's the example that we see in God in his compassion. He doesn't see Ishmaelites, he doesn't see Muslims, he knows what they will become and he knows what their end will be. What he sees and what he shows us is a woman, a woman who's been displaced and what he shows us is a child who is on the verge of death. And the example that he gives us is that we would not be so blinded by partisan politics that we see a nation, that we see a religion and that we don't see humans who are created in the image of God and therefore not worthy of compassion and not worthy of expressions of grace. You see here's the thing that we see and again, that's to be emulated by the people of God. Abraham doesn't lose any of the promise of God nor does Isaac lose any of his inheritance because God was kind to Hegar. Hegar, Ishmael will receive the judgment that they will receive but that's God. And here's what he has called us to do in the spirit of the second table of the law that when we go through this world, we don't look at people and say, well, what they deserve. There is no breathing individual on planet Earth who has the right to say what someone deserves because we are all recipients either of common grace or we are recipients of saving grace and whether you are recipients of either one or both because the children of God are the recipients of both common grace and saving grace. None of us have received what we have fully deserved. The vile with sinner that lives at this moment who hates God still has not received what they deserve. Until the Lord calls him home, God has given us an opportunity. Those who have been at the feast of Isaac and those who will go to the feast of the Lamb have received enough grace from the God who sees this woman and this child so that as we journey through this life, we don't put people in camps. We don't entrap people to their past what we see is an opportunity. And this is what Jesus demonstrates in his story about the good Samaritan. And that's why that parable, you notice it's all mixed up. It's all mixed up. He says it was a priest. It was a Levite and it was a Samaritan that saw a pagan that had been overtaken. And who was it that was that man's neighbor? It was the despised one. I think the point that Jesus is making, in fact, others recently have made the point that Jesus is the good Samaritan. But the point that he's making to those lawyers who want to know how I can do the bare minimum and be saved is that we should not allow the culture in the world in which we live to make us categorize people. There's only two categories of people and God doesn't even give us the ability to make that distinction when it comes to living in this world. He doesn't tell us to love your brothers. The second table of the law is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And so my point in looking at this story, this story of this woman because she returns, not just in the pages of biblical history, but she returns in the pages of human history. She returns in the moments that we live day by day, we have refugee crisis, we have immigrants, we have people of all sorts of backgrounds and circumstances, we have people in need who some don't even know they are in need. And what God has done is he has dispensed us from the celebration of the weaning of Isaac. And he's given us eyes to see the bond woman. This is not a religious thing. We know what she stands for religiously. This is not a spiritual thing. We know what Ishmael represents in a spiritually, but we who look to the lamb that will be provided by God have been challenged by God's own example to deal with the suffering that we see in this life in light of the grace that we have received so that what we can see is a woman and a child, not a nation, not an ethnicity, not some subcategory, not some substratum, but what we are to see are people who are image bearers of God and anyone who was in our path in need. Brothers and sisters, I pray that the grace that you have received from the table of the Lord would allow you to see that that is your neighbor. And if God can show compassion on the ones that he will judge in the day of judgment, if God can show common grace to the one that he is designated as a vessel of wrath, then we who were vessels of wrath ought to be all the more ready to show grace even as we have seen it. Hey, God and her son are thirsty and God has placed us as wells in this world by which they can receive drink. Amen, let's pray. Gracious God our Father, we come to you in the blessed name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ thanking you for the grace that we have received. We thank you for the reminders that all of us were condemned in Adam and you by your grace since before the foundation of the world. You have chosen us to be in your son. And at some point in time you have brought us to a saving knowledge of who Jesus is. And as our eyes have been opened to see our Savior, we pray that you would likewise open our eyes to see our neighbors. And as you have given us opportunity to minister, we pray that we would not be blinded, we pray that we would not be unduly influenced by either our fallen flesh or the world around us that we would demonize those that you have put in our path and not extend hands of mercy and compassion. Thank you for reminding us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and we pray that those for whom He has died would be wells of water for the neighbors that are around us. Thank you for your grace and your mercy. And it is in Jesus' name that we do pray, amen.