Genesis 21:8-34 The Give and Take

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This message is by lead pastor Don Filsek and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis.

If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. We're gonna go ahead and get started here. So if you can find your seats, that would be great. I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here and just want to welcome all of you to the church here this morning.

Be sure to fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in. If you're willing to, fill that out and turn that in in the black box back there. Then we'd also ask that if it's your first time filling out one of those cards that you'd do us a favor and take one of those coffee mugs that's there, just our way of saying thank you for coming and joining us.

And then also remember that any offerings that you choose to give this morning, go in the black box back there. We don't pass an offering plate. We don't want anybody to feel pressured to give, but we do recognize that it's a spiritual act.

And so if you would choose to give, use that envelope in the black box back there. And if you're not going to use that envelope, you could help us out just by recycling it in the white basket back there.

We can reuse those next week. And so that's available to you. And then also remember that any gifts that are given that are marked expansion fund, either on the envelope or on the check, will go into a special account that is moving us towards a building.

We already have property and we're moving in that direction. So any money labeled specifically towards that is going into a separate account or being earmarked for that rather. So we've been going through the book of Genesis and it's almost turned into a biography of Abraham.

Some of you felt that way as we've been going through. You get into this section that's just extended about the life of Abraham. And it's tempting to see the stories that we're reading is primarily biographical.

Like you could walk away from here going, OK, now I know Abraham really well. And there's the temptation for that to be the case. But this is not merely the story of Abraham. The story of Abraham is included in scripture only because he was chosen by God and swept up into God's story.

So we must remember that when we're reading the pages of scripture, we're reading about God. And he is first and foremost, the main character of scripture. And Abraham is there. And in one sense, Abraham is along for the ride.

It's not that Abraham was super righteous or super cool or just a fine specimen of humanity. And God was like, man, I got to get that guy in my book. I got to I got to write some stuff about him because he's super awesome.

Now, we've seen throughout the pages of scripture so far and throughout the book of Genesis that Abraham is a lot like us. Ups and downs, mood swings, things going really well, sometimes taking leadership and just big strides and steps of faith.

And other times just having major setbacks in his life and making dumb decisions and poor decisions for his family. And then then all of a sudden just taking on a bunch of faith again. And we've seen that throughout the pages of the book of Genesis so far.

But here in our text today, we see Abraham, the one blessed by God. And we're going to actually see him experience and suffer some personal loss and also suffer some personal gain in the context of God's promises.

God promised him that his descendants would become a great nation, a powerful nation. And then he promised to give him some great land for his name, for that his descendants to develop as a nation in.

And in our text, we'll see an issue, one particular issue arise regarding the offspring of Abraham, which is that promise of making him a great nation. And then we'll also see one issue that arises regarding the land of Abraham, which was promised to him.

I want to point out, though, that I think a theme kind of throughout this text is that the promises of God do not protect us from the storms of life. Have you have you kind of seen that in your own life as you become a Christian?

How many of you would would say that a lot of problems have come into your life even after you have entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ? Would you would you be honest and say that? I think many of us have experienced difficulties and problems and struggles, even despite the fact that we're connected with Christ.

Some that even maybe stem from our connection with Christ. And yet we have a model and an example of how that works out in real life and that God did not spare his own son, but let him go to the cross on our behalf.

Even though that night before, before he went to the cross, he was pleading in the garden, but then ultimately concluded, not my will, but yours be done. And God let him go to the cross on our behalf.

So God, the promises of God do not protect us from the storms of life. And Abraham's life shows us that ultimately that being chosen by God doesn't make everything just run smoothly. It isn't the magical solution to all of our earthly happiness.

And those who enter into a relationship with the Almighty still have difficulties and struggles. And here in our text this morning, we're going to see Abraham up against it once again, going through a struggle, going through difficulty.

So I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 21. We're going to read 8 through 34. We covered the first seven verses of Genesis chapter 21 last week. We're going to start off in verse 8 and read through the end of the chapter.

That's page 13. If you take out the paperback Bible in the seat back in front of you, turn to page 13. And I say this every week, but I mean it sincerely. If you don't own a copy of the Bible, please take that paperback one with you.

I know it's just paperback, but we do want everybody to have a copy of the word of God that they can read in their own house. And so take that if you need it. I follow along as I read Genesis, the majority of Genesis chapter 21, starting in verse 8.

And the child grew, the child being Isaac, and the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 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 heir with my son Isaac. And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son.

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. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.

So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulders, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

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 bow shot. For 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 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.

Lift 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. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. At that time, Abimelech and Phycol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do.

Now, therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me, or with my descendants, or with my posterity. But as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned.

And Abraham said, I will swear. When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servant had seized, Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today.

So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart, and Abimelech said to Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you have set apart?

He said, these seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well. Therefore, that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath.

So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.

And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us. Father, we come to this text, and we, I think one of the things that immediately stands out to me is the family mess.

There's just a lot of messiness in the household of Abraham, and I think many of us in this room can relate to that. Many of us have experienced that to various degrees of messes and problems, some caused by us, some caused by others.

But in the end, we all can relate to what it means to be a broken human on a broken planet with messed up sin and crud in our lives. And so, Father, I ask that you would open our eyes to see what great and glorious salvation there is for us, even for us who are broken, even for those of us who are sinners and recognize our sin and the depth of our depravity.

And as we recognize that, that we would rejoice all the more that you have saved us who are so unworthy and so undeserving. But you have loved us so much that you sent your son to die for us. And we see, we see you ultimately preserving even those who are cast off in our text.

And Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to your glory, your majesty, and your salvation this morning as we sing these songs to you. Let it be praise that rises up from our hearts, not just from our voices, not just from reading words on the screen, but ultimately that our lives and our hearts would rejoice in who you are and what you have done.

And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. A big thanks to the band for leading us in worship. I'm just grateful for them and the work and the time that they put in to lead us before the throne of God. Yeah, that's appropriate.

That's appropriate. Glory to God on that. Excellent. I encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 21. I just think it's beneficial for you to be able to look through and walk through the text with me and having that open from verse 8 to 34 is good there.

And then remember that at any time during the message, if you need to, you can get up and use the restrooms back here. Coffee, donuts, juice available as supplies last there. So take advantage of that.

The Celebration of Isaac’s Weaning and the Turn to Conflict

Now to highlight, I mean, we're starting in the middle of a chapter. We're starting in verse 8. So it'd be kind of good to set the stage for what happened prior to this, just to remind us where we were last week.

And the first seven verses of chapter 21 were a celebration of sorts. They are one of the highest points in the book of Genesis so far. God had made a promise to Abraham that he would have offspring by Sarah.

And now he has. He and Sarah had Isaac in their old age. And now we come to our text right away in verse 8 and we find that he has survived the tentative infant years. How many of you kind of know that there's some tentativeness to infants up to like say the age three or so?

And I mean, even like statistics kind of show and stuff. I mean, you want to get your kid grown up, right? I mean, that's kind of the nature of the way that things move and that they work. But if you put yourself in an ancient culture, for a child to make it to three infant mortality rates were through the roof.

I mean, hundreds and hundreds of times what they are today. And so for a child to make it, usually a child went to solid food around the age of three. And we have documentation from ancient cultures that that was the case.

And there was often a celebration associated with that. A celebration primarily that the child has survived to three. And so that's what's going on here. A pretty common cultural custom at the time. We see that right away.

And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. Anybody think this is probably an amazing feast? From what we know of Abraham so far, his hospitality, the way that he rolls, his wealth.

He's an extremely wealthy individual. We've seen that all along. I bet this was some feast to behold. One that if you lived in the area, you wanted to be invited to. You wanted to be at this one. But verse eight tells us that Isaac moves on to solid food and they throw that traditional feast.

And that's what's going on here in this text. But notice how quickly things turn sour. So it turns from celebration to sourness very quickly in the text. Now, the last time we saw Sarah, she was celebrating.

She was exalting. She was singing with joy and with laughter that her son, whose name is Laughter, has been born. So that's where we left her in the first, really at the end of verse six and seven. She's singing, literally singing about the birth of her son.

But now we get to verse nine and it says, but Sarah, and whether this actually occurs at the banquet, I think the context indicates that something at the banquet went on. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian.

Notice that he's not even named in the text. There's a derogatory movement in the text towards the son, Ishmael. But Sarah saw that the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, Isaacing.

That's what the word is. He is Isaacing. He is laughing. Now, there's been a lot of scholarship that's gone into translating that one word, laughing, in this text. It is a word that is a derogatory word, more along the lines of mocking.

There's some kind of mockery that is going on in this context. Remember that the initial, what was the initial use of the word laughter in association with Isaac? What does that have the nuance of? A laughter of derision.

Angels and the Lord appear to Sarah and say, you're going to have a child. And what does she do? Yeah, right. Like that kind of laughter. It's not like, oh, ha ha ha, this is a really funny joke, you know, and milk's coming out her nose.

And it's that kind of laughter. This is, this is like laughter, like as in, like, right. That kind of laughter. And that's what's going on in the text. So when Ishmael, Ishmael is somehow mocking this little boy.

And here, I think it's implied quite clearly that he finds the whole Sarah and Isaac thing laughable. He thinks it's kind of funny. He's mocking them and likely mocking the entire concept of the promise of God that this child is the one.

By this point, I think, I think, put it in perspective, put it down into real life. Because I think sometimes we read these stories and the story is just a story and say, yeah, it's included in scripture.

Move on to the next text and just move on, check off your read through the Bible in a year list or whatever. And you don't feel this text. What's going on in Ishmael's life? He's approximately 16 years old by this point.

I mean, we can pinpoint that pretty clearly. If indeed, we can say for sure, according to the text and the times that are given and the dates and how old Abraham was when so-and-so was born and all this stuff.

We can figure out that if indeed this celebration is happening at Isaac's third birthday when he is being weaned, then it makes sense. I mean, we can definitively say Isaac, that Ishmael is 16 years old when this happens.

Now, what is the first 16 years or, well, really the first 13 years of Ishmael's life been like? Think about that. He is the, he's the only, he's the heir. He's the only son in the family, really the only child in the family.

What kind of family is this economically? A wealthy, a well-to-do family. He's enjoyed his father's favor for many years, probably taking him out, teaching him how to shoot a bow, how to hunt, how to do all that stuff.

I mean, learning all the man stuff and going through those traditions and all of that kind of stuff. He's been raised as the firstborn of a wealthy household with privilege and favor. But all of a sudden, do you see it?

Can you feel it? Something in the family has changed. What's changed? Another son has been born. A new son has come on the scene. A son who has been promised, a son who is being celebrated, a son who is being rejoiced over, who is being doted on as the child of the promise.

And so what I want to suggest to you is I don't think it takes any imagination on our part to understand what might motivate Ishmael towards mocking his little half brother. Does it take a radical imagination to kind of like, well, I wonder why he, why would he be so upset?

Why would he be all bent out of shape? Why would he be making fun of his brother? Some of you are looking at me like with a blank stare. I'm not sure if you're getting it, but I think it makes sense. I mean, it does to my own sinful heart.

I can look at this text and go, I can totally see how jealousy might seep into Ishmael's heart. And I think that's exactly what's going on here. And he is mocking, you know, child of the promise, whatever.

Well, we know further though, in this family relationship, we know that Hagar and Sarah are not besties. Okay. Right. Did you know that already? Did you get that impression from reading the book of Genesis so far?

Sarah has already kicked Hagar out of the house once and not just kicked her out of the house, but kicked her out of the house while she was pregnant, like leaving her and kind of just hoping that maybe she just goes away and never comes back.

And then in that incidents that we saw back in Genesis chapter 12, we actually saw God care for Hagar out in the wilderness to lead her to water and then command her to go back under the authority of Sarah again.

And there is nothing in the text so far throughout the book of Genesis that indicates a healed relationship between Hagar and Sarah. You can look for it and you're not going to find it. There's nothing that says, oh, Sarah brought her in and just kind of put her arms around Hagar and said, they're there.

I'm sorry that all of this happened. And I mean, they probably unfriended each other on Facebook. I mean, that's how bad this relationship has gone. You know, I mean, this is pretty dire here. And it was all, that first incidence was all because Hagar was mocking Sarah for being barren, for not being able to bear children.

I mean, that's pretty significant thing that she's making fun of Sarah for and she kicks her out of the house. And now once again, we see mocking happen from that part of the family. Maybe Ishmael came by that honestly.

Maybe he learned that a little bit of that from mom. I don't know. I've mentioned before, and I think that it's worth addressing here again. I've mentioned before that polygamy is not a good arrangement.

The text of scripture never paints a rosy picture of polygamy, animosity, hostility, competition, volatility seem to be the norm in a family with more than one wife. And have you seen that in the page of the scripture?

Go through it and find out where there's more than one wife in the family. And it's never a pretty picture that scripture paints of that. And in verse 10, Sarah commands, look at verse 10 with me, look down at the text.

So she said that Sarah, so Sarah said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman. She is commanding her husband to do something on her behalf. This is the terminology in Hebrew is a command. Do you think Sarah's a little hot under the collar?

She's a little upset? She uses all kinds of pejorative language, including the word throw away, cast out. It's the same word that you would use for rubbish in this ancient time. It's like, just throw it in the bin, cast it off, get rid of her.

And then not only that, but she doesn't say her name. She calls her this slave woman. Her son shall not be an heir with my son. Do you see how derogatory Sarah has become just like that? Do you think there's a little bit of history between Sarah and Hagar here?

Again, just saying they are not best friends. This is a super low point for Abraham, as many of you can imagine. Can you imagine this being a little bit low on the scale of things? As a matter of fact, the word that is used here in verse 11 is a little bit unfortunate in the translation, displeased.

Is that a really strong word? It doesn't really, so it doesn't convey the Hebrew language very well, the word displeased. I wonder, I'd like to sit down with the translators of the ESV and figure out what motivated them to use such a subtle word for this.

It's an extremely strong word in Hebrew. That's what I want to communicate. So strong that if God is said to be displeased with a human, they are almost always dead by the end of the chapter. For real, for real.

So if God says, I am displeased with you, throw up your hands. It's over, okay? So it's that kind of word. It's that strong. If a human demonstrates displeasure toward another human, it almost always comes to blows or violence in the text of Scripture.

And then here's the thing. This is the only place in Scripture where the word very modifies the word displeasure. Very displeased. Are you getting what I'm saying? So the word displeased in and of itself is a strong word, and then he modifies it with the Hebrew word meyod.

Very displeased. Abraham is spitting mad, and can you put yourself, men, women, everybody in the room, can you put yourself in a situation, have you ever been in a situation where you knew you could not win?

You've got, you're faced with a decision. You know you have to make a decision, and you know if I choose this way, I am in trouble, and if I go this way, I'm almost dead. Caught between the hammer and the anvil, and that is right where Abraham is, and he does not like being there.

But there's more motivation than that. It's not just the difficulty of the situation, but there's another motivation that is burning in Abraham's heart here, and that is that Abraham loved Ishmael. Abraham loved his son, loved him with an intense love.

So far that we saw earlier, I don't know if you remember this in the book of Genesis, but earlier in the book of Genesis, he actually, speaking with God Almighty, said hey, maybe we could skip the whole baby with Sarah thing, and you could just take Ishmael and make him the child of the promise.

Some of you maybe remember that, most of you probably don't, but he actually said that to God. He said maybe we could just skip that whole, you know, we're old, we're not getting any younger, I'm not sure what it's, I mean the bleachers at Little League are pretty hard, and I'm getting old, I'm 90 years old, and I can't imagine that being comfortable, and so maybe we could just go with Ishmael.

He's already old enough, and maybe he could just be the child of the promise. Did he love Ishmael? Yes, he loved his son. It actually says it grieved him. He was greatly displeased on account of, because of his son, on account of his son in verse 11.

He loved him. So that Abraham gets so irate in the text, that makes me pretty sure that I don't believe he would have done what his wife suggested to him, were it not for verse 12. Verse 12, God is going to intervene in the situation and give him guidance and direction.

How many of you would love that if God just kind of like appeared to you and gave you, like you're caught between the hammer and the anvil, and then all of a sudden God shows up and it's like, oh thank you for being here right now.

What do you want me to do? And I really believe that God actually appears to him in a dream or in a night vision, because in verse 14 we're going to see, so Abraham rose early in the morning after he has this meeting with God, and God speaks to him.

It seems likely again, appears to him in a dream, and God tells Abraham to follow his wife's instructions. Anybody kind of struggle with that? Okay, so let me paint this picture. Sarah is angry. Do you agree with me on that?

Sarah is upset. Sarah is acting rash. Would you agree with me on that? Some of you? Sarah is responding with vindictiveness. Would you agree with me on that? She is suggesting divorcing his other wife.

Another way of translating that, cast off, is the exact root for the word divorce. For him to cast her off is to officially be done with her, and Sarah is suggesting that he disown his own son, and God says, yeah, run with that plan.

Do that. Do what she says. Anybody struggle with that? A little bit? But God here gives a reason at the end of verse 12. He says, the offspring I've promised you will come through the line of Isaac and not Ishmael.

Abraham is once again being called to follow God and to trust him, and this time he must do this at his own personal loss. But I think that this situation is preparing us in some degree for what's going to come next week.

Abraham here is being asked to lose something. Next week he's going to be asked to lose it all. Everything. You see that here. Some of you know where the text goes, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

He must give up, in this text, his firstborn son, his second wife. And I want to point out that the inheritance of Isaac is indeed in jeopardy by Ishmael's presence. God is cutting Ishmael and Hagar free, but he is not abandoning them.

We're going to see that shine through later on in the text, that he is not leaving them alone. He's not done with them yet, but he is setting them free, ultimately that Isaac might flourish and have the of his father by himself.

So Abraham rises early in the morning, steps out to obey. A shining point for Abraham here. Gives her bread, about three gallons of water, which is the word for skin there is a sheepskin or a goatskin, would hold about three gallons of water, and that's about what she can probably carry over her shoulder anyways.

And he then gives his firstborn son to Hagar. This is picture this being somewhat official, in a sense. But on the other hand, if you imagine this being a simple transaction, then you are missing the reality of human life, the reality of human experience.

He is giving away his firstborn son and sending away his wife, and probably anticipating that he will never see them again. The text becomes hard to translate into English, actually, because the Hebrew text employs some tricks in order to communicate that the last thing that Abraham does is give Ishmael to Hagar.

The language gets tricky in it, so it actually looks like, if you were to read it in English, it looks like he places the child on her shoulder, doesn't it? But it's because the text is bending over backwards to make the very last thing that he does give the, I mean, it's like, you get the picture that he's hemming and hawing.

He's got some bread, and he kind of gives that to her, and then he, hands her some water, no, no, take the water, and I'll put it on your shoulder. Are you okay? You're going to be okay? Go up, and then the very last thing that he does is give over his 16-year-old son to his wife, who is about to become his ex-wife, and that's what's going on here.

She departs into the wilderness of Beersheba. I imagine a lot of tears and a lot of emotion in this departure. This wilderness that she's going to be going to comes into play in the next account that we see here about Abimelech, and it can be kind of confusing, but it's connected by this concept of this well, Beersheba, and I think it's intentionally connected.

Beersheba means well of the seven, or well of the oath, and we're about to find out why it's named that, and that's the area where she's wandering in, and that she wanders in an area named after a well is a little bit ironic in light of what's about to happen.

They're going to run out of water, and I would imagine that water goes quickly in that area of the world. This is the eastern Negev, a desert near the Arabian Peninsula in the north, and the Arabian Desert is right there.

This is the very same area where the exodus occurs. Water seems to be a pretty big deal to the people of Israel as they're going through this. I mean, water is a significant thing. It's like gold to those who live in the desert, right?

It doesn't matter if you have gold in your pockets. If you don't have water, you're going to die, right? So you'd trade all your gold for water if you're wandering in the desert, and that's what's going on here.

I mean, if you've learned anything from Bear Grylls, have any of you ever learned anything from Bear Grylls? Do you know who I'm talking about when I say Bear Grylls? Man versus Wild. He's the dude who they drop him out in the middle of the wilderness, and then boom, he like shows up in the middle of the city or something, and he's like magical.

The first thing he tells you to do, number one, number one priority for Bear Grylls, survival in the wilderness, water. Water. You got to get water. Apparently, Hagar didn't have cable TV. She wasn't able to learn from, wasn't able to learn from Bear Grylls, and so she doesn't find water, and they run out.

Now Ishmael's around 16, and his mother has to help him find a tree for shade to lay under. He's in a bad way, and she is so certain. Put yourself in, I mean, this is a horrible situation. She's in such a bad situation that she's so certain that he's dying that she removes herself about the distance that a man can fire up an arrow, about a bow shot away, because she doesn't want to see or hear her son dying.

Pretty desperate, extremely desperate situation. It's quite likely that he's suffering from heat exhaustion, that he's suffering from dehydration. It's also quite likely, if you put the context, how is Hagar functioning versus how is her 16-year-old son functioning, that he has probably let her drink most of the water.

Put that in perspective. She's going to do all right in the majority of this text. As a matter of fact, enough that she's able to pick him up and carry him to water here in a moment. She's doing okay.

He's not. It's a dire, desperate situation. She is weeping and crying out to heaven, as you can imagine, but God hears, and so apparently Ishmael is crying out as well, and God hears the voice of Ishmael, which ultimately is a crazy play on words in this text.

God Ishmael's Ishmael. The name Ishmael means the God who hears, and God once again hears Ishmael. Ishmael's Ishmael. And now the one who's mocking has put them in this situation. Think about this. Why are they even in this scenario?

Why are they out there struggling in the desert? Because he was mocking his three-year-old brother, right? Half-brother. Isn't that ultimately why they're in the situation to begin with? And yet God hears the voice of the one who has caused this predicament.

Now, I'm not sure. Look at verse 17 with me. How comforting is this? I don't want to belabor the point. I don't want you to be in too much misery this morning, but I mean, if you're in this situation, are you just fit to be tied beside yourself with anguish and frustration?

And then this is the words that God sends through an angel to her. What troubles you, Hagar? Are you just, are you angry? Are you frustrated when you hear those words? Like, what? I mean, you better move on to the next sentence pretty quick here, angel, right?

Can we move on to where you're going with this? Because I'm hearing your voice, and I'm not sure I like what I'm hearing. And then even the phrase, have you ever thought about this? The phrase fear not is not a particularly comforting phrase by itself.

How many of you would love it if you're in the middle of like one of the darkest times of your life, and your friend just comes up and is like, fear not, man. Fear not. You're all right. Why don't you fear with me for a little bit?

Like, can we fear together? Okay. I just need, are any of you built like that? Like, that's the way I feel. It's like, could you just sit in this with me for just a little bit before you start offering platitudes and cliches and some of the little Christianisms that we launch people's direction?

Just fear not. God is good. God is great. And you're just like, oh, but he doesn't end there. And that's good because the text doesn't, I mean, the speech of the angel moves right on to what is comforting.