Genesis #14 Ch. 16-18 Test of Abraham — Chuck Missler

Abraham’s Importance and Imperfect Faith

This is the fourteenth study in the book of Genesis conducted by Chuck Missler. The subject of this tape, Genesis chapters sixteen and seventeen.

Well, I think what we should do is just jump in with a word of prayer. Father, we just praise you for your living word. We thank you, Father, that you have entrusted us with this treasure. We ask you, Father, now, this evening, by the power of your Holy Spirit, to open it to our understanding, that we might understand better the lessons that you have for us in the life of Abraham, and that you would just help us appropriate these things to our personal walk, that we might be more pleasing in thy sight, that we might grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen. We're right in the middle of the life of Abraham, and it's interesting, Abraham, if you were going to mention one Old Testament person that is probably, by some scale of reckoning, the most important personage in the Old Testament, with, of course, the exception of Jesus Christ, you'd be very tempted to pick Abraham.

You can think of Moses and David and so forth, but you could probably build a case that, by some weighting concept, that Abraham's pretty important. In fact, it's only because of the writer in the book of Hebrews who attaches more importance to Melchizedek than Abraham, that I teased you with that last time, that Melchizedek is, by definition, from the book of Hebrews, more, you know, a higher order, more important than Abraham.

But getting back to our kinds of perspectives, Abraham's certainly significant. He is known as the father of the faithful, friend of God, and he has a lot of different titles that are uniquely his, in a sense.

And as we talk about Abraham, as we study him, we're inclined to see him on a pedestal. We see him chronicled in the book of Hebrews, substantially. In fact, three different ways, three different times, mentioned in terms of his faithfulness.

We see him referenced again and again in Galatians 3 and Romans 4, and where have you, as an example of faith. And what we are likely to do, which is a mistake, is to assume that he's some kind of example that we could never attain to.

And one of the things that I'm convinced the Lord would have us understand is how Abraham blew it. And that's a source of encouragement. Now, we dwelt a little bit of that in chapter 12, when he was first called.

How, in fact, he didn't initially respond like he should have. The Lord had told him to get out of his country and kindred and leave his family behind and so forth. And he didn't do that. He moved upriver, up from Ur of the Chalice up to Haran, took his family with him.

It wasn't until his father died that he moved, and even then he took Lot with him. The Lord had to intervene to get them separated. And so we can begin to sense that Abraham is imperfect. And praise God that he is, because in his failures, we can better understand that what God is doing in Abraham is teaching us on how God himself operates with the believer.

Six Tests in Abraham’s Walk

We're going to... Let's take a look, just in summary fashion, of at least six different ways that Abraham was tested just so far. The first test he had was a test of his fervor, really. It dealt with his ties of his nature, where he was instructed to leave his country and his kindred.

That was his first test. Hey, God called Abraham, an idol-worshiping Gentile, out of the Ur of the Chalice, to leave his country and his kindred, and so forth. And I suggest that those ties are pretty deep.

They are in all of us, to our families, our country. Very deep roots. God said, leave it all behind. Go to a land that I will show you. So that was his first test, and I think I would give him the 50 percent on that.

Okay? You might say, well, we'll give him 95, because he ultimately ended up doing what he was supposed to. The second test was really a test of his reliance on the Lord, his confidence that the Lord was sufficient, because the Lord introduced a famine in the situation, the stress of circumstances.

And how did Abraham fare under that test? Well, he went down to Egypt. What harm can that cause? We'll find that out tonight. Harm that can cause. And that was, I'd give him a zero on that one. He blew it.

Went down to Egypt and not only embarrassed himself so that the, that he was condemned by an unbelieving king, in terms of being dishonored, a liar, and having exposed his wife to compromise. Bad scene.

He also picks up a handmaiden hagar that leads to trouble in tonight's lesson. The third time was perhaps a test of his humility. That was when there was strife between Abraham and Lot, and I should say the herdsmen.

And here Abraham does pretty well. I'd give him 100 percent. He says, hey, Lot, we've got problems. We can't both reside in the same place because of the strength of our herds. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right.

If you go to the right, I'll go to the left. But hey, you call it, we'll split up. And that was, I think, I think he did pretty well there. I think we'd give him a pretty good grade. The fourth test is one of courage.

One of his, a test of his boldness. The kings of the north had wiped out the kings of the south and taken Lot and his possessions captive. And here when an alliance of five kings was insufficient to prevail over these people, Abraham rouses his own trained army and goes after him and succeeds.

That takes guts. That takes guts. Setting aside the fascinating lessons that here's a father of the faithful that maintained a trained army of just 318 guys born under his own roof. Interesting. I would give him 100 percent on that one.

I think he did pretty well. The next test is probably one of his maybe cupidity or greed or what have you that had to do with the offer of a reward by the king of Sodom where Abraham declined. We talked about that last time.

I'd say he did 100 percent there. He honored God pretty well. I don't want anyone to say that you made Abraham rich, right? That's pretty good. I think he did okay on that one. We get tonight to a test that we're going to spend quite a bit of time on.

That's his whole business of Hagar. God had promised Abraham an heir and Abraham somehow came to the conclusion that God needed help. And we all will do this. We'll laugh at Abraham but at the same time we'll all do this and if we can take away the benefit of tonight's lesson we will have the evening well spent.

But Abraham as you know takes at Zerah's suggestion, takes Hagar as a handmaid. And of course that turns out to be a bad scene. We have the benefit of that still today. And we'll talk about that as the evening progresses.

But I would say that Abraham blew that one substantially. So he's got one tie maybe and two minuses and three pluses and that's not bad. What's the point? We are going from Haran to Moriah. We're going, or if you will, from the Ur of the Chaldees to Moriah.

And we're getting there by a path of successes and failures. And every time he blows it he learns. And he gets to the point where after he in effect blows it with his kindred and he blows it with a famine.

He does pretty well with the herdsmen and the slaughter of the kings, the dealing of the king of Sodom. He does fumble the heir thing. But the climax of Abraham is in chapter 22 when he offers his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

Don't see Abraham just at Moriah. We're climaxing, we're building up to that point. Recognize that he's had a lot of stumbles and falls along the way. You and I do too. And we need to study Abraham from that point of view.

Put yourself in his shoes. He's not some kind of a guy on a pedestal that we read about and say, ooh, isn't he neat? He's a guy that's paving, he's blazing the trail for you and I. Because every one of these things you and I are going to face.

We're going to have to, we're called to separation. God is asking for us to have a funeral in our life. It may not be of our father in Abraham's case, but it's of something that we're tied to, that God wants us separated from.

And it won't be easy. And either come earlier or later, the earlier the less painful it'll be. Call to separation. We'll have the stress of circumstances. It may not be a famine, but there will be the Egypt nearby that we can retreat to if we're not willing to rely on the Lord's sufficiency.

And there'll be strife. We'll have an opportunity to put our rights on the altar before the Lord. Let the Lord deal with it. We can back off and let those rights, let our humility as a witness glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

There'll be opportunities for boldness and courage. There'll be an opportunity to take up arms against a cause that the Lord has sanctioned. Those will occur also. Interestingly enough, those are the cases where probably you don't fumble as much.

It's easier to die for the Lord than live for him. Take that sword and go forward. Hey, that's great. That's great news. But if I said the Antichrist is outside, come on, let's go get him, guys. We'd all leave and go.

If I said, by the way, the rapture won't be for another 11 years. You've got to pay off the second mortgages and so forth. You'd say, oh, you're not kidding. So it's all, you know, somebody I think once quipped that the Christian walk is more important about life after birth rather than life after death.

And what is that life after you're born again? That's the test. And of course, we'll have opportunities for greed and those kinds of things. But most important, tonight's lesson, is this whole issue of self-will.

Abraham trying to help the Lord. The Lord promised him an heir and so Abraham is going to help the Lord give Abraham an heir. And we'll have much to say about that tonight. Something else we'll try to sensitize ourselves to as we go is to notice the pattern that God deals in.

We've noticed that with Abraham, he was called, he was obedient, and then the Lord revealed himself. The revelation of the Lord is a response to obedience to a call. And we often think the other way around.

That we often miss the fact that, hey, God revealed himself to Abraham. Terrific. He did it after Abraham obeyed, not before. And we'll see that pattern throughout the scripture, that revelation comes as a result of obedience.

And something else we'll notice, if we watch carefully, that these trials, these tests of our faith, always occur right on the heels of a blessing. Wow, the Lord really blessed me today. Terrific. Watch out.

Elisha wanted Elijah's mantle so badly, and he no sooner got it than he had to use it. Solomon wanted wisdom, and he got it just in the nick of time before these two women started fighting over the baby.

And so forth. And the Lord was anointed by the Holy Spirit as baptism, and right there, he's in the wilderness, 40 days, and being tested by Satan. You can always see that right on the heels of some outpouring or some super blessing, right, it's like you're being set up.

Because right after that, there's a test. There's always an exam. And it follows right on the heels of that. So that's an observation. Okay, tonight we have made it, amazingly enough, to chapter 16, if my reckoning is correct.

Hagar, Ishmael, and the Consequences of Self-Will

Some of you may feel I've been pretty shy of treatment of 15, but that was last week. Tonight we're going to start fresh on 16 and move forward. And we're plunging right into this question of Sarai and Hagar.

I think the way to do this, probably, is to just read through chapter 16 and then back up and pick up what we're going to try to make note of. Genesis chapter 16, verse 1. Now Sarai, Abraham's wife, bore him no children, and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

Now we all jumped to the conclusion, and I think it's valid, she picked this gal up while they were down in Egypt. We don't know that, but that's a presumption that I'll trade on. And Sarai said unto Abraham, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing.

I pray thee, go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abraham hearkened to the voice of Sarai. Now, there's something here, this may sound very strange to you. First of all, I think most of you girls can appreciate, especially in that culture, how important bearing children was.

I mean, that was a big deal. Now, it's not a small issue today. But at that time, it was amplified by several orders of magnitude. A bigger issue than today. Especially for Abraham, whose passion and desire was for children.

And whose destiny, apparently, it was manifest by the Lord's promises to him that he would have seed. In fact, three different kinds. So, you know, it's three different kinds. Dust of the earth, sand of the sea, stars in heaven.

And you can make a study of that, because some would hold that they're not the same thing. They're not just three different idioms. They mystically mean something different. But in any case, the point is, it was a big deal.

And Sarai's beginning to realize, you know, she's past the age of bearing. And she's been bearing, and so she's concerned. Now, the procedure she's suggesting may strike you as strange. But we have good archaeological evidence that this was commonly done under the Code of Hammurabi.

At least, in the ancient cultures. That if the mistress of the house was barren, a valid approach to providing legal progeny to the patriarch of the family was to use the wife's handmaid. She was sort of a pinch hitter, if you will.

A stand-in mother. Okay? Now, it strikes us as strange. But, I mean, you need to understand, in the context of the story, that was the way things were done. This wasn't something that Sarai came up with as just a neat idea.

Let's try it. Okay? This is something that there's good evidence to believe that this was broadly done in those ancient cultures. So, I think that's worth mentioning. So, she suggests it, and Abraham hearkens to her.

Figures, okay, good, that sounds pretty neat. And Sarai, Abraham's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian. Fascinates me how often it's mentioned and emphasized that she was an Egyptian. Egyptians were offspring of Ham, the lion that was cursed by Noah.

That may or may not be relevant. For those of you that are studies, students of Ham, Shem, and Japheth, might find that interesting. Okay? Those of you, I think we kicked off that idea back in Genesis 10.

That those three strains are very relevant. Not the least of which, all three strains are at the cross. Shem was at the cross in terms of the Jews. Japheth was in the cross in the form of the Romans. Where was Ham?

Simon of Cyrene was a Hamite. But anyway, moving on. Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian. After Abraham had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan to give her to her husband Abraham to be his wife. In other words, he'd been there ten years.

That seems like a long time. Let me tell you, it's going to be another thirteen before he achieves his destiny. So, the Lord is trying his patience. The Lord gave him a promise, expecting him to be patient.

Ten years have gone by. And he, quite naturally, takes matters into his own hands. I say naturally in the sense that he's figuring, gee, maybe I haven't heard the Lord right. There is a procedure by which I can have seed.

Perhaps that's what the Lord would have me do. And you can build a very solid, substantial case that Abraham, it was alright. This was commonly done. It was a legal procedure. It would give him legal heirs of his own issue.

What can be wrong with that? Gave her to Abraham, her husband Abraham, to be his wife. To be his wife. That marriage is going to be annulled by the Lord shortly. Because the Lord sends Hagar back to be her handmaid.

Not to be Abraham's wife. But anyway, that's what Sarah had set up. Verse 4. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Now you can just visualize that, human nature being what it is. Verse 5. And Sarah said unto Abraham, The wrong done me be upon thee. Now you guys, you know, you guys tried to pass the buck on Eve in Genesis chapter 3.

Well, here in Genesis chapter 16, the gal's trying to pin the rose back on the guy. It's, again, human nature. Incidentally, the rose doesn't stick. It says, I have given my maid into thy bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes.

The Lord judge between me and thee. Now Abraham said unto Sarah, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleaseth thee. Now incidentally, that's bad news too. While on the one hand, I don't think it's fair for Sarah to try to duck the responsibility of the scene.

Because she promoted the idea. Abraham here is abrogating his role as the head of the household. So you can make something of that if you are inclined to. But in any case, the verse finishes, And when Sarah dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.

So, Hagar, heavy with child, splits. Because of the pressure. Okay? Now, this is interesting. Before we are all through, we are going to give Hagar a pretty tough time. And we are going to also, because we are promoters of Isaac and all of that.

And Jacob and all that. We are going to sort of give Ishmael the back of our hand. It's our nature to do so as we read the thing. And we get very spiritually proud about how neat Isaac was. And here is Ishmael, the son of the flesh and all that stuff.

I want you to see the other side of that. And notice what happens in verse 7. The angel of the Lord. Who can that be? Who is that? Some Arab deity? The father of all Islam? No. None other than Jesus Christ himself.

And if you don't know that, take a concordance someday. And study all the appearances of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. The technical term is a theophany. And you can make a pretty strong case that these are the Old Testament appearances of Jesus Christ.

We won't develop that whole thing tonight. The angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to shore. Now this is very interesting. I suggest to you this is the first woman at the well.

The same guy, later on when he is incarnate as a man. Has a date with a gal in Samaria. The disciples are going off to do some shopping. And he is by the well. In John chapter 4. He has this very interesting episode with the woman at the well in Samaria.

We will get very interested at women by wells shortly. But we will come back to that. Anyway, and he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid. Notice the form of address. From where camest thou? And where wilt thou go?

And she says, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarah. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress and submit thyself unto her hands. She also has a destiny to perform. She also has some patience to be tried.

And it will be some time before she goes her way. When she is properly sent. But at the moment, go back unto the submission of her mistress. Verse 10. The angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.

And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and thou shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael. Because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man.

Incidentally, to be frank with you, the Hebrew says a wild ass man. Now I don't mean that in the way we use it vernacular. But that's actually what it means. A very, very wild, untamed, nomadic existence.

And it's very interesting to see that destiny validly ascribed to his progeny for 4000 years. Think about it. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against, against the face of all his brethren.

Not in the presence of. The word is stronger. It implies adversary or conflict. And she called the name of the Lord who spoke unto her. Excuse me. Yeah, she called the name of the Lord who spoke unto her.

Thou God seest me. For she said, have I also here seen him that seeth me? Wherefore the well was called Beer Lahai Roy. Beer meaning well. Lahai Roy. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Berit. And Hagar bore Abraham a son.

And Abraham called the son's name whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. And Abraham was fourscore and six years when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abraham. Okay. It's interesting. We have here a first mention. Whenever we have a first mention, it's interesting to make a study out of that.

We had an opportunity last week, but I sort of postponed it. But maybe I give you a mention like when we had the birds. Remember Abraham was chasing the birds away from the sacrifices when he cut the heifer in half.

The birds came and he kept having to chase them away. Now if you're curious about birds, I submit that you might find it fun to take a concordance and check on the roles of birds throughout the scripture.

There's a principle. If you want a fancy word, it's called a principle of expositional constancy. What it really means is that there's a tendency in the scripture we discover, we infer by observing, to use a symbol or an idea consistently.

Leaven is used consistently, Levitically speaking, as a symbol of sin or that which is bad or false doctrine in both the Old and New Testaments. Birds are interesting. We have the birds that Abraham was chasing away because they were adverse to his purposes in making the covenant in the last chapter, the previous chapter.

We also have Joseph's dream in chapter 40 that we'll come to, where the birds devour. In the issue of the baker and the wine steward, if you recall, the birds devour there. In Daniel chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar, symbolically speaking, cuts down the tree that was the home of birds, which is the disruption of Babylon.

And what makes this perhaps interesting to most of us that have been in Revelation, in Matthew chapter 13, we have the kingdom of God that is supposed to be a mustard bush become a tree that becomes the home of the birds that try to pick the seed from the highways.

Who are what? Ministers of Satan. The Lord tells us in that chapter. Anyway, you can take a look at birds throughout the scripture. In this case, taking another totally different departure, we're talking about wells.

Now, we can find a lot of things. I suggest you might want to do a study of wells. And we would start right here in Genesis 16, which is the first mention of a well. It's by a fountain in the wilderness where God has revealed to Hagar and God opened her eyes there.

Now, what is water in the scripture, mystically speaking, symbolically speaking? Oh, the Holy Spirit, that's correct. But what else? Well, yes, but by what? The Word. There you go, the Word. Exactly. The water is used two ways, as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, but also of the Word.

Now, you're clean through the washing of the water by the Word, which I spoke in Ephesians 2, 2 and on and on. Ephesians all the way through uses that example. And indeed, the water and the labor in the tabernacle is for cleansing.

That was the liquid sea, molten sea, speaking of the brass, labor. And it becomes the shining sea, the glassy sea in Revelation. Here we're washing in His Word, there we're standing on it. The Holy Spirit using a pun as a practical matter.

Okay, if we move to Genesis 21, we find Hagar again by a well. And we can draw an analogy, and we will when we get there, to John 6, the woman at the well in Samaria. We can also find in Genesis 29, Jacob is by a well.

And the sheep are gathered at the well and watered. Next well occurs in Numbers 21, verses 16 and 17, where Moses is there, and he has Israel gathered by this well, and they are to sing to it. Declare praises to the well.

What's happening there typologically? Who are they singing praises to? You don't sing praises to an inanimate object, admittedly they are with a well. What's in view? Praising the Lord. And if we took the trouble to get into 2 Samuel 17, Jonathan and Ahimaz hide in a well at Enroble.

They're under pursuit, they hide under a well, and they cover it and put corn on it so no one finds them. And we're reminded of Colossians 3, where our life is hid in whom? Jesus Christ, exactly. So what you can do with wells, if you're interested, is follow those through, and you will probably come up with seven, at least seven relationships that wells have with you.

Okay? Christ is, of course, the living word. God reveals himself through and in that word. Our hearts are opened by that, by God there. The sheep are watered there. Israel is gathered there by the well.

We are told to sing praises there. It also affords us protection, security. So, that may not be useful to you, maybe it is. That's what you can do if you want to take something like the word well, see where it appears, and see what spiritual lessons accrue as we go.

A couple of things before we get into a broader view here. Verses 7 through 9 there, you notice that the Lord addresses Hagar as Sarah's maid. What he's doing there is disallowing the marriage. She's not addressed as Abraham's wife, as Abraham and Sarah intended in verse 3.

He's just saying, hey, you're still Sarah's maid. And he also says you've got to return for another four chapters. You've got to stay there until Genesis 21, verses 12 through 14. Or putting it another way, you've got to hang around for, I believe it's 13 years.

Thirteen years, think about it. Now, one point here, it's interesting that Hagar will be the subject of the Lord's grace. But never at the expense of righteousness. The interesting thing we learn through the epistles particularly, is that the Lord's grace is always on the basis of the righteousness being established, not at the expense of it.

The Lord will set things in order here. Those of you that are numerologists will obviously make a big thing out of 13. Why 13 years? Well, I don't know. Thirteen is suggested by many to be suggestive of evil.

In 1 Kings 7, verse 1, compared to 1 Kings 6, verse 8, as an example. Esther chapter 3 has some reference to this, but going on in broader terms. Jericho, as a stronghold, primary stronghold of the Amorites, was marched around 13 times.

Once a day for six days, and seven times on the seventh day. There's also 13 judges, and the period of the judges is regarded to be the low point in many respects in Israel's moral history. And there are also 13 evil characteristics enumerated by the Lord.

Mark chapter 7, verses 21 through 23. When you list those, it turns out there are 13. The red dragon, the dragon in the book of Revelation, which of course is Satan. Revelation chapter 12, verse 9 tells us.

The dragon is listed in the book of Revelation how many times? 13. There are multiples. Jacob says to Pharaoh, he speaks of 130 or 10 times 13 as the days of evil to him. That's Jacob's words. In Deuteronomy 14, when it lists unclean animals, it's twice 13, 26 of them that are listed.

And when Paul was beaten, it was three times 13 or 39 stripes. So those that are sort of oriented to the use of numbers in scripture, get queasy feelings when the number 13 surfaces with some justification.

I don't think it's that simple. I share that with you for those of you that are interested. You can wrestle with that. The way to solve a problem like that is find all the places that 13 occur in the scripture, and you infer yourself what consistent ideas seem to be represented.

Some numbers are very clear in what they mean. But this to me isn't quite that. Certainly we have a flavor of it being kind of uncomfortable, but I don't think it's quite as simple as some of the people who write pamphlets would like to believe.

Galatians on Flesh, Spirit, and the Two Covenants

Now, I would like us to examine, though, sometimes as I get into some of these left-wing typological things, you probably think, oh, Chuck Missler is off on one of his tangents again. You're probably right.

In this particular case, I have an excellent commentary to recommend. It's the book of Galatians. And we're going to just poke at Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4. Because we're going to have him speak about this whole thing.

And actually, if you take the book of Galatians, you get the sense that Paul is trafficking through this period in Genesis. Chapter 3 was in, we talked about that, relative to chapter 15 and so forth.

Now we're moving into chapter 4, and we're going to be sensitive to the fact that Paul's mind is on Genesis, the place we're in. And you can see that if we were going through Galatians verse by verse, you'd feel that as we go.

But we don't have time for that. We'll just pick it up about verse 22 onward. Paul talking to the Galatians. For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, and the other by a free woman.

Who was the bondmaid? Hagar. Who was the free woman? Sarah. That comes later, but we obviously know she has Isaac by Sarah. He has Isaac by Sarah. Verse 23. But he who was of the bondwoman was born, how?

After the flesh. But he that was born of the free woman was by, what was the promise? The promise to Abraham. Now, the great question that Paul raises in the book of Galatians is, can that which is begun in the spirit be completed in the flesh?

Your salvation, your walk in Christ, was born of what? Flesh or spirit? Spirit. Spirit. Spirit. If you're born again, born again in Jesus Christ, that's an act of the spirit. Would you expect your walk before the Lord to be completed, brought whole, in the flesh?

Hardly. But that's exactly the basic point that Paul hammers away in the book of Galatians. Very fundamental, crucial issue to each and every one of us. And here's just one of several avenues he takes to attack that point.

He's saying, he's using here Hagar and Ishmael and Sarah and Isaac as an allegory. In fact, he says so in the next verse. Which things are an allegory? Remember Hosea chapter 12, we looked at that. That the Lord will speak by similitudes and types and so forth.

A type, a model, an allegory for our purposes are the same thing. It's an analogy. It's a model. It's a representation for our learning, our understanding. And Paul is saying that Hagar and Sarah represent a model for our learning.

Does he imply they weren't real people having real problems back some thousands of years ago? Of course not, they really were there. But the Lord has orchestrated this so that we'll learn by it, not just in the direct practical sense, but also in the mystical or spiritual sense.

And that's what Paul is dealing with here. Which things are an allegory? For these are the two covenants. What? Sarah and Hagar? Yes. The one from Mount Sinai. Ooh, Sinai, that's good, isn't it? Wait a minute, he's saying bearing children for bondage who is Hagar.

Ooh. I thought Mount Sinai was a good deal. Charlton Heston made a big thing of that, right? Mount Sinai. Yeah, that's where the law came. And you don't get saved by the law. It has a role, but not our salvation.

The one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for bondage. The bondage of what? The bondage of sin. And that's what the whole book of Romans chapter 6 and 7 and all that's about. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children.

Interesting, isn't it? Hagar's children are the children of bondage. Where are you and I? We begin as Ishmael in the flesh. The story in a sense can begin with Hagar by the well confronted by the Lord.

In the same sense that the Samaritan woman in John 4 is by the well discovering the source of living water. And it wasn't the well, it was the one that was talking to her. That's where we start. But what's our destiny?