FBC Morning Light – January 11, 2023

Well, good Wednesday morning to you. We are in the middle of the week already, and I hope your week is going well for you. Well, today we're reading in Genesis 21 -22, Matthew 8, and Psalm 8. And Genesis 22 is one of those passages in the Bible that really gives us pause, and we can scratch our heads a little bit about it.

Because it's in that passage where God comes to Abraham and tells Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice. And that throws us. We're like, whoa, how can God do that? Well, we'll talk about that in just a minute.

The Promises Behind Hagar and Ishmael

But what I want us to see is that there are two really significant life-threatening events in chapters 21 and 22. One of them has to do with Hagar and her son Ishmael, Abraham's first son, by Hagar. We'll talk about that in a second.

And chapter 22 has to do with the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. Now, behind those two chapters and those two very serious events, situations, are two very significant promises. And we have to go back in Genesis to earlier chapters.

In chapter 16, God gives a promise to Hagar to offer the mother of Ishmael. Now, remember the background there. Abraham and Sarah are husband and wife. Sarah can't have children. And so she comes to Abraham and says, hey, I can't have children.

Here's my handmaid. Have a son by her. This is a common practice in the culture, and so on and so forth. And we talked about influence by the culture the other day. But anyway, so Abraham agrees, and Hagar gets pregnant.

She gives birth to a child, and the child is Ishmael, son of Abraham. Well, when Sarah sees that Hagar has had a son, she gets a little jealous, and she thinks Hagar is getting a little haughty because Hagar has the son and Sarah doesn't.

So then Sarah starts treating Hagar very terribly, very badly. And so much so that Hagar runs. She flees. And she's convinced that life is over. Their life is going to be miserable. And it is in that setting where the Lord meets Hagar and says, where are you going?

She says, I'm fleeing from my mistress, Sarah, my mistress, the one I'm serving. And the angel says, go back. Go back and submit yourself to her. But then he says this, and here's the promise that we need to hold on to for chapter 21.

He says, behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell, he will live in the presence of all his brethren.

There's a promise to Hagar that Ishmael is going to be a warrior. He's going to dwell in the presence of all his brothers. He's going to live for a long time. Now in chapter 17, there's a promise that then comes to Abraham.

And Abraham doesn't have an heir by Sarah, but the Lord comes to him and says in verse 19, Sarah, your wife will bear a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. And then the Lord says this, I will establish my covenant with him, with Isaac, for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

Isaac's descendants after him. Okay? So the promise in verse 19 of chapter 17 is to Abraham, your son Isaac is going to live a long time. He's going to be a father of children. Okay? Now, that takes us to chapter 21, and in chapter 21, Hagar has once again left.

She's been kicked out of the home. This time Abraham kicks her out, and she's out in the wilderness, and she's despairing. She's convinced that she and Ishmael are going to die. And she kind of sets Ishmael down, and she goes off.

They're both very thirsty, and apparently Ishmael has almost passed out of thirst, and she goes off a little ways and just is waiting for him to die. But did she have to wait for him to die? Wasn't there a promise?

Wasn't there a promise made to her regarding Ishmael, that he would dwell in the presence of his brethren? And so in her despair, the Lord graciously comes to her in chapter 21, and says, no, this child is not going to die.

Here's a well of water. And she looks up, and there's a spring of water, and she gives her son water, and he survives. The promise will be fulfilled. The promise will be fulfilled. Hagar didn't really think about that promise.

She wasn't cognizant of it. She wasn't operating on the basis of promise. Now you come to chapter 22, and you see a contrast. In chapter 22, the Lord comes to Abraham and says, I want you to go up and offer your son Isaac on Mount Moriah as a burnt offering on the mountain that I tell you of.

Well, now, if Abraham's thinking is like Hagar's thinking, then he would be in a state of despair and panic, and may want to even flee, like Jonah, flee the opposite direction, go the opposite direction.

But he doesn't do that. Instead, he says, okay. He takes his son Isaac, he loads up a caravan with some servants, and heads to Moriah. And the Lord points out a mountain for him to go up to. Abraham and Isaac leave the servants behind, and they head on up to the mountain.

Isaac's got the load of wood for the burnt offering, and there's no animal, and Isaac says to his dad, Dad, you know, we're supposed to go offer an animal on the altar. Where is the animal? And Abraham replies and says, the Lord himself will provide a lamb for the sacrifice.

And the whole time, Abraham is operating on the basis of faith. His faith is that the Lord himself will provide an animal for the sacrifice. He's told me to go offer Isaac up as an altar, as a burnt offering on the altar, but that's not what's going to happen.

He's testing my faith. God had come to me earlier and said that Isaac is going to be the one with whom the Lord makes the covenant, and Isaac's the one who's going to have descendants come after him. If Isaac gets offered as a burnt offering, he can't have any children, he's done.

I mean, this is it. And God's promise will prove to be false. Abraham wouldn't go there. Instead, Abraham operated on the basis of faith, that one of two things is going to happen. God is going to provide an animal up there somehow, and not going to let this happen.

Or, God's going to raise him from the dead, somehow, someway. But God has made a promise, and that promise will be fulfilled. Abraham operated every step along the way on the basis of faith, believing in the promise of God.

And there is the encouragement, and the challenge to us, isn't it? That we operate today, we walk today by faith, operating on the basis of the promises of God to us, to his covenant people, to those who walk with him.

Let's walk that way. Let's walk in faith as Abraham walked. Our Father and our God, I pray that you would encourage us and help us to do that, to believe fully the promises that you have made to your people in your word, because those promises are yea and amen.

They are going to be fulfilled in your time, and in your way. And we thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, listen, have a wonderful day as you walk in faith today. God bless.