Wednesday Bible Study - Foundations of Redemptive History Pt. 2 (Session 7)

Thank you. Thank you.

Check, check, check, check. All right. Let's go ahead and open this time in prayer together.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Lord, we give you, Lord, we give you, Lord, we give you thanks. Father, we thank you, Lord, we give you, Lord, we give you, Lord, you're the center of our lives. you're the center of this church. Father, so often we fall short. And we thank you, God, for your son. And we thank you for what he's done. And we thank you, Lord, that you have given us your spirit. You've given us your word. You've given us everything that is needed. And God, I pray that you would equip us, reminding us, Lord, that we are not at the center. God, that all things are about you, all that we read. Lord, the whole of our lives, this church, and our purpose has everything to do with you. I pray, God, that that would not be just the doctrine we espouse.

I pray, Lord, that that would be the drive of our hearts. That that would be why we live, and that would be now why we sing. So thank you, God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

It is so sweet. And it is so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more. Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus, just to trust in Jesus, just to trust his cleansing blood. And in simple faith to plunge me, needs the healing, cleansing flood.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more.

Yes, it is sweet to trust in Jesus, just from sin and self to cease, just from Jesus, simply taking life and rest and joy and peace. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more. Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.

Teach me some melody, yes, son, it sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise my ebenezer, here by thy great help I've come. And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I trust him, how I trust him more.

Jesus, how I trust him, how I trust him, how I trust him more. Jesus, how I trust him, how I trust him more. He to rescue me from danger interposes precious blood. Oh, that day when free from sinning, I shall see thy lovely faith. Clothed in the blood-washed linen, how I'll sing thy wondrous grace. Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, take my ransomed soul away. Send thine angels now to carry me to realms of endless day.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor. daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to lead the God I love, here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above, prone to wander, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to lead the God I love, here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it.

Seal it for thy courts above. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. All right. Well, welcome back, everybody, to our Wednesday night Bible study. Our announcements here are going to be three. The first one is our Berean service auction submissions. And so, as you know, we every year do that service auction where our church members submit things that they would like to serve in. And then we have other people in church who will start to bid on those services. And all proceeds go to our missions missions. So, please make sure that you do that by this coming Saturday, April 11th, because that's going to be the last day to submit our services. Secondly, our cleaning and maintenance day is on April 18th.

So, that's a week from this Saturday at 9 a.m. This is a great opportunity to be able to serve with the church. Actually, for our small groups and home groups, this is kind of a cool way to serve together, too. So, maybe even inside of our small groups to be able to say, let's try to serve together in these areas at church on Saturday, April 18th. That's a good place to start. And lastly, we have our members meeting and our service fair on Sunday, April 26th at 2 p.m. So, please save the date for that one. That's at the end of this month. There's going to be our, we do it twice a year, that service auction that we do that we're going to be setting up out there. So, if you are a member of Berean Community Church, please make sure to come to all of that.

And there's going to be a fundraiser lunch that day as well. Well, before we head into our groups for our discussion, we are now in session 7, chapters 20 and 21, Abraham, Abimelech, and Isaac's birth. Hopefully, you didn't wait until the last minute because there was a lot to go through in these two chapters. And then, right now, we'll do a real quick review or they're not always reviews. They might just be thoughts. So, some personal thoughts. With the ugliness of what we saw in Sodom, it's crazy to think that by the time of the Judges, the wickedness of Israel had gone just as far. So, if you remember at the end of Judges, it shows that spiral right before a king is erected in Israel that we see a similar situation as what happened in Sodom.

But that wasn't a place like Sodom. That was actually Israel, the nation of Israel. And so, that wickedness had infiltrated all the way into the people of God. And so, that's just an amazing, heinous thing to see. In Ezekiel 16:48, and so, it warns using Sodom and Gomorrah as warnings to us. "As I live, declares the Lord God, Sodom, your sister and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had arrogance." And look at what Sodom is accused of here. "Arrogance, abundant food, careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy." That is a little bit different than what we would have thought would have been the damning thing that God would bring before the Israelites.

But you can see how easy it is that the wickedness we see out there is much closer to us than we think. "Thus, they were haughty and committed abominations before me." So, it shows the foundational heart that caused Israel to be able to get to just the same place as Sodom. And he says, "Therefore, I removed them when I saw it." And so, we see some more in Matthew 10:5. "These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them, 'Do not go in the way of the Gentiles and do not enter any city of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'" So, Jesus instructs his disciples to go to Israel, not outside. And he says, "As you go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if it is not worthy, take your blessing of peace. Whoever does not receive you nor heed your words as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city." So, it's good to remember and to think Sodom and Gomorrah is not just some wicked, despicable city out there. While we're not like them, the warnings are clear in scripture that this is much closer to us than we think. And the very same heart foundations and stance that existed in Sodom and Gomorrah might be in us closer than we think. And so, we have to be very aware of those things and see how even Genesis texts, ancient texts like these, are very applicable to us.

As we go into chapter 20 and 21, sometimes it is very tempting, this is the ancient Near East, that we'll look at it and be like, we'll be talking about it kind of on our armchairs, looking at these things like things that happened long ago. But we want to connect them to our hearts. Well, how do they apply to us? What does it mean to us? What warnings is God giving? What comfort is God giving through these stories? All right. We'll come back here at 8:30. 8:00. 8:00. 9:00. 9:00. 10:00. 10:00.

Thank you. If you're in the other rooms, start making your way back. We'll start in a minute. Thank you. Thank you.

Let's go ahead and begin. I'll pray to open this time up. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the discussion we're able to have. God, it is very confusing. It's hard for us to understand. Help us to be able to understand. Help us to see what it is that you're trying to communicate to us. Most importantly, Lord, I pray that we would see Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Remember to ask lots of questions.

Through a book like Genesis through a book like Genesis. It will be helpful. So we just ask very simple ones. I hope that asking questions has gotten much easier. It's pretty easy. You're just reading and trying to understand what's going on. So where is it. So where is it. It's really cool. So where is Negev. So where is Negev. So where is Negev, Kadesh, Kadesh, Shur, Shur, and Gerar? Abraham journeyed from there. So where is Negev. So where is Negev. So where is Negev. So where is Negev? Hebron is kind of where he was. He was able to kind of overlook and see. Kadesh is down here. Sure. You should probably remember that place from what happened before where when Hagar was kind of traveling down towards Egypt.

And so in Genesis chapter 20 verse 1. Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. And then he sojourned. He goes up to Gerar. And then he's just kind of like moving around up there. So he's sojourning. But the first time we actually see the place Gerar is Genesis chapter 10 verse 19. The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon, which is the northern boundary, as you go toward Gerar as far as Gaza, which is Gaza is kind of the western part where it touches the Mediterranean. As you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah, Adma, Zeboim, as far as Lasha. So we're getting more and more familiar with all these places. So he's talking about Canaanite territory. Right? And so this is the boundary. This is the southern boundary that we're looking at.

Oh, I also want to remind you of trying to put yourself into the shoes of Abraham. Get into his mindset. Remember what it is that he has just witnessed. So if you look at what happens right before, it says that Moab and Ammon are born. Right? And so for the Israelites who are standing at the brooks of the Jordan, you know, like, and they're receiving all of these things, reading all these things that Moses had put together, they're like, oh my gosh, this is where our sworn enemies came from. And so they're thinking and seeing all of these things. And so for someone like Abraham, like, this was a tragic end. We don't know. A lot of, like, these things were speculating. We have no idea what's going on in his mind.

But you can imagine him being in a very bad state. Right? Like, he was trying to advocate for Sodom and Gomorrah, and then he just sees it absolutely destroyed. I don't even know if he knows what happens, what happened to Lot. You know, we don't know what, what is going on here. We don't know. But we can see that, especially going into chapter 20, that something is wrong with him. Something's tumultuous inside of him. But two, this is where Abraham deceives Abimelech. So again, we ask questions like, why does Abraham make the same mistake again as he did with Sarai and Pharaoh? That should be the first thing that went in, right? You're like, even if you didn't remember completely, you're like, this sounds really familiar.

That probably came through your mind. And you probably should have gone back to chapter 16 and reread it. Because it's meant to evoke that in us. And some of us even did the diligence of going forward into chapter 26, and you're like, whoa, like, what is this? Like, Isaac does the same exact thing that Abraham does. Why did God speak to Abimelech in a dream instead of to Abraham? This was Abraham's fault. Why are you doing this to Abimelech? Like, we have these kinds of questions. Was Abimelech actually blameless in all this? That's another question you could scratch into. Like, was Abimelech actually blameless? Like, if you read the story, you'll see some things. And then what does it mean that Abraham was a prophet?

Like, why not priest? Why not king? Or, you know, there are a lot of different questions that come up. We're not going to get to everything, but these are questions that we ought to ask. So, in verse 2 and on, we see here, it says, so Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. And so, we can't just move on. We have to be like, who is this guy? Okay, he's the king of Gerar. Okay, great. It's that Canaanite territory. Just for you to know, Abimelech might have and probably was more of a title than a name. Most likely, okay? So, kind of like Pharaoh, like there was like, Pharaoh was like a title, like a king type of title. Abimelech was probably that. It literally means father of a king or some people say father of my king or like king of my father.

Like, there are a lot of different renditions depending on how you kind of read it. But we see a bunch of different Abimelechs in scripture. The first one is here, king of Gerar during Abraham's time. We see another one in chapter 26, years later, years, years, years later, king of Gerar during Isaac's time. And then, there's another person in 1 Samuel, and Psalm alludes to it. This man named King Achish, he's called Abimelech. So, those three probably have to do with Abimelech being like a title, like a king of that region. Now, there is another Abimelech in Judges, who's the son of Gideon. That's more likely a name. And then, in 1 Chronicles, there's a priest who, there's some, like, interesting conversation with this one.

But he was most likely a different person as well. His name is most likely Ahimelech. Okay? So, anyway, I'm just bringing this up to remind us that we need to just be aware, as we're pulling scripture together, that there are all these things.

Okay. So, here we are. Gerar is right there. It's in question mark because we're not sure. It didn't exist after some point. But, right there, it's going to be the place of the Philistines. Okay? That's why, like, later on, as you keep reading through this chapter, you'll see that it was in the area of the Philistines. So, this is, again, what we'll call anachronism, which is using future names that future readers understand of that place, but it likely wasn't named that then. I hope that made sense. In Genesis 21-32, so this is in our reading, but we can go and look at it. So, they made a covenant at Beersheba, and Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, arose and returned to the land of the Philistines.

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines for many days. So, we know this is the Philistinian area. Later on, during the time of Isaac, it also says this, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out through a window. So, we just store it away. Something about Philistines. King. And so, Abraham says of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister. Did you groan? You should have audibly groaned. And you're not doing this right if you didn't. You're like, no way. This can't be happening. In chapter 12 is when we first saw it. It came about when he came near to Egypt that he said to Sarai, his wife, see now, I know that you are a beautiful woman.

And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you. Now, one interesting thing is here, like, I know some of us are thinking, like, what kind of, like, 90-year-old lady is, like, desirable? Right? Like, I'm sure we're thinking about that. Is that offensive? I hope not.

Come on. Okay. Okay, maybe I should have said it. But still, you know, like, come on. Okay, but whatever the case, he says this, right? He says, here in chapter 12, he says, I know that you are a beautiful woman. He does not actually say that here. So, there are different things that you can kind of take from this. There was, like, a lot of understanding of taking other, like, taking on wives as consolidation of power or taking on status or something like that. Okay? We're not sure. So, there's no need to land on something conclusively, but we know that this is what happened and this is what was desired. And so, we're asking this question. How could you? How could you do this again? Did you not learn your lesson?

I thought you were a man of faith. So, Abraham, what we're seeing again, he used a half-truth to deceive rather than fully trust God. And we see that. What does he say? She actually is my sister. Right? And so, like, it's very easy for us to say, like, did he actually lie? No, he didn't actually lie. But what he was trying to communicate is that she is not my wife. Right? And so, he was using a half-truth. And how often do we do things like that? Secondly, his habitual fear in his travels was never fully mortified. Like, it wasn't fully mortified. In verse 13, he says, and it came about when God caused me to wander from my father's house. Already even there, it's like, God caused it. God caused me to wander from my father's house.

Then I said to her, this is the kindness which you will show to me. Everywhere we go, say of me, he is my brother. And we're asking the question, wait, did you do this more than twice? We don't know. We don't know. But we do know that he said that. Everywhere we go, say that you are my sister. He never mortified that fear, that there was a habitual fear in his travels. And then there was a temptation to doubt, and sin has a tendency to repeat itself. And not only does it repeat itself in his life, but we see it again later on with Isaac. And once we get to there in the next session, we'll talk about that. But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night and said to him, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married.

So I think Abimelech was likely already aware that something had happened. There was probably some kind of turmoil already happening in his house. How do we know this? Because the house was already in a state of fear. We'll get there and we'll look at it. But there's some interesting, interesting stuff that happens. Verse 17, Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids so that they bore children. For the Lord had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. So what do we know? That the wombs had closed, right? Across the entire house. How does a household even know that that happened? I don't know. We don't know the exact time period of what's going on here.

We don't know what it looks like for them to understand that all the wombs had closed. We don't even know what it means. He closed the wombs of the household, but why is God healing Abimelech? So it's weird stuff, right? But we know that likely something had already happened. The household was aware of it, and then this dream comes to Abimelech. So we have some things that we need to kind of figure out. Verse 4, now Abimelech had not come near her. And we look at that, it's like, what a noble man, right? I don't know. I'm sorry I keep saying that. But I don't know if he was actually just purely noble. I don't know if it's because something had happened to him, something was going on in the home that prevented him.

But we do know, did he not himself say to me, she is my sister, and she herself said, he is my brother? In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands, I have done this. And then God says, yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this. Meaning that I know that you are true in what you're saying right now. But look at what he also says. I also kept you from sinning against me. God is saying that he did that. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. So, Abimelech, like, he seems to be innocent here in the matter of fact, manner, but we don't exactly know how that happened. Okay? Okay, so just kind of moving on. Now, therefore, restore the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live.

But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, and you and all who are yours.

Okay. So, some more things to recognize here. It should have struck us as very strange that it seems like it was Abraham's deceit that causes this. And now I hope we can go another step and be like, well, maybe Abimelech wasn't completely a man of integrity and nobility. We don't know, right? But God stopped him, regardless, and he's called to go back to Abraham to get healed. That kind of seems messed up. Right? It does. But there may be some shadowing happening here as well of Israel and the Gentiles and where one must go to find salvation. But for sure, it's interesting to think that him being called to pray is going to be opening the wounds that God had closed. Now, why is that strange?

Not only is it strange because Abraham was the one that, like, kind of kicked it off. Abimelech maybe, like, got caught in the crosshairs of this, but coming back to Abraham, put yourself in the situation of Abraham. How would you have felt? Super guilty, right? Like, I think Abraham probably was, like, very, very ashamed of the fact that he had done this again. But think of the further humility that would have probably come to Abraham. What has Abraham's single biggest problem been up to this point? His very own wife cannot conceive. Her womb was closed. He had been praying for her for decades. And Abimelech comes and says, please pray for me. He prays, and the entire household's wombs open.

Right? So God is doing something here. God is purifying, sanctifying, testing, revealing. Do you trust me? Or are you going to trust in your own hands? Think about how faithful God is here. How patient he's being. For us, we're already, we're, like, groaning. We're like, ah, how could you? You're dumb. Like, why would you do that? And we're reminded simply of God. All we can do is see God's hands at work. Remember what God is doing. He is protecting. In Genesis 3.15, he had already said the seed is going to come from this line. I promise this. He is trying to get people of faith to believe him. To prove himself over and over and over and over again as we move towards Christ. And so that's why even with Abraham and the Messiah, God is protecting.

God is being faithful. God is doing everything he can. He did not allow Abimelech to mess up this line. Imagine what would have happened. Imagine the, like, even if Abimelech didn't sleep with Sarah, imagine the question marks that would have come up. When people are like, well, we're not sure if Isaac is actually of Abraham, right? But then what he did was he closed the wombs of the entire household. So that it would not have been possible. And so there's a lot of God's fingerprints on this. In Genesis 18.22, then the men turned away from there and went towards Sodom while Abraham was still standing before the Lord. Abraham came near and said, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because Abraham is being made a typecast of Jesus. Like a mediator. Like some people will even say prophet, priest, and king are all kind of seen in this man. And so Abraham, he is instructed to go back to Abraham to be healed. That Abraham needs to pray to God and then God will heal you. You cannot go to God directly and pray and then he will heal you. You must go to this man. You must go to this mediator. You have to go outside of you because you cannot approach God like that. There's another one right there. Okay. These are all mediator stuff. We're going to pass it by. All right. So continuing in verse 8. So Abimelech arose early in the morning and called all his servants and told all these things in their hearing.

And the men were greatly frightened. So now he's coming before his men and then sharing this news. And it says, Abraham said, because I thought surely there is no fear of God in this place. And they will kill me because of my wife. Because she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not of my mother. And she became my wife. And it came about when God caused me to wander from my father's house that I said to her, this is the kind that she will show me. What's happening here is we are made to look at this and just shake our heads at the doubting nature of Abraham's heart. Do you remember how silly it would be if we remember what God was able to accomplish in Abraham? Do you remember this?

When Abraham heard that his relative had been taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, 318. Come on, 318 men. He grabbed 318 fighters and went in pursuit as far as Dan. That's the northern end. He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated Amraphel, king of Shinar, arch king of Elessar, Chedor Laomer, king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goem, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. He brought back all the goods and also back his relative Lot with his possessions, and also the women and the people. Like, this is what we're remembering, right? He went up and he destroyed them. What is he afraid of? The small place, Gerar, and Abimelech.

What do you mean there's no fear of God in this place? Abraham's faith has been shaken. He saw what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. We're asking the question, what is he doing in this wilderness region anyway? Is it because he's nomadic and he needs to take his sheep there to graze in the desert? Right? Like, it's confusing, like, what's going on here? What is he doing? Is he going on looking for Lot? We don't know. So we have to keep asking these questions, what's going on in his mind? And then it says, Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham and restored his wife, Sarah, to him. So now, they're like, wow, Abimelech is now taking stuff and giving Abraham things for what he did.

Right? Now, we see, again, all these different echoes. In Genesis 12, but the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues of Sarai, Abraham's wife. He struck Abimelech's household with wombs closing. Then Pharaoh called Abraham and said, what is it that you have done to me? Abimelech says the same thing. What is it that you have done to me? And then he says, why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say that she was my sister? Why did you say that she was my sister? It's the same thing. So I took her for my wife. Now then, but then here's where it deviates. In Egypt, he says, take her and go. Take her and go. Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him and they escorted him away and his wife and all that belonged to him.

Now, Abraham was very rich in livestock and silver and gold. So God blesses, but not the land. But not the land. Why? Because that was Egypt. That was not the promised land. That was not what God had promised. But here in our story today, it says, Abimelech said, behold, my land is before you. Settle wherever you please. Here's the deviation. Egypt says, take it and get out of here. Never come back. Here, he says, settle wherever you please. Why? Because this is what God promised. God is orchestrating all these things. Do you remember the unconditional covenant that was given? He is going to be faithful to the land promise. He is going to protect the nation and the people and the seed. And he is going to, for sure, bring this blessing upon his people.

And so the blessing comes to Sarah. He said, behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. And so Abraham prays, heals them, for the Lord that closed fast all these wounds. So this story shows and reveals about sin and its nature that God sets the standard. Some of us, we have those questions of like, is this really the right thing? That Abimelech needs to go to Abraham? Yes. That is the right thing. God sets the standard. We don't. He says what is right and he says what is wrong. And he says, you, Abimelech, you cannot do this. You have to go to one who can. One who is close to me. We see the seriousness, oh, sorry. We see the seriousness of sin. We know in the scriptures it says that the wages of sin is death.

But we're seeing that there's a seriousness to the sin that was committed here in this passage. And we're going to see more and more of the reverberation of sin in the future as we see what happens even with like Ishmael. And then the solution that there must be an advocate. Okay. So we have like applicationpoints.com. Why do you think Abraham repeated the same kind of sin he committed earlier? Like we have to answer that question. And why is it significant that even though that happened, God still calls Abraham his prophet? How does this point forward to Jesus and God's faithfulness? Another question. Have I ever used the half-truth to protect myself, my reputation, or my comfort? How might situations like these reveal that I trust in my own schemes more than God's protection?

And then thirdly, how can my private sins create consequences for other people? Have I put someone else in a difficult position because of my own self-interest? And again, a reminder that these things are here. I'm just putting up these questions for us to discuss at the end. But these are things that we need to generate on our own as we read scripture for ourselves. Third, the Lord fulfills his promise of Isaac. We ask questions, and now you come up with them. Okay. All right. So, then the Lord took note of Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. That's called repetition. He's going to do it, is basically what this is saying. So, Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time which God has spoken to him.

And so, we remember all these things that were given, done furrowing, and I'll make you a great nation. I'll make your descendants as the dust of the earth. But one who will come forth from your own body shall be your heir. Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. Sarah, your wife, will have a son. So, each one getting closer and closer to the passage here, and he's born. Do not run over this passage that we know. Of course, we knew that this was going to happen. This is God fulfilling what he said would happen. That God will always fulfill what he says will happen. And then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight years old as God had commanded him. Now, Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Now, there's a lot of repetition here of his son that was born to him, that Sarah bore to him, his son. Like, over and over again, this is coming out in these verses here. And it's meant to do something to us. Sarah said, God made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh with me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age. The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. And so God did it. And so we remember, we take a note here of Sarah. By faith, even Sarah herself received the ability to conceive. It is debatable, is this Abraham's faith or Sarah's faith? Whatever the point, no, whatever the case here, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful.

We do know that. She, Sarah, considered God faithful who had promised. Therefore, there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead as that, as many descendants, as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. That this was all faith that we're seeing. That God is faithful. He is worthy of our faith. Do I trust him, even when I can't see? Fourth, Hagar and Ishmael. Part two, because we saw this in chapter 16, the beginnings of this. So ask questions, ask lots of questions. And we get to this passage. Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. Therefore she said to Abraham, drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.

Okay, so much to speculate here. Not sure. Don't know. But mocking, there is some kind of like, Galatians will use this word, persecuting. Okay? So there is something going on here that's a little bit deeper than just like he's like making fun of him or something like that. But it says that Sarah tells Abraham, do this. I can't have Ishmael to share an inheritance with my son Isaac. So that's the point there that we're looking at. And it says that the matter distressed Abraham greatly because of his son. But God said to Abraham, do not be distressed because of the lad. And lad means an older boy, probably in his teens. But God said to Abraham, do not be distressed because of the lad and your maid.

Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her. For through Isaac, your descendant shall be named. You pause again. You go, wait, something doesn't feel right here. Why? Because in chapter 16, verse 2, we saw this before. Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go unto my maid. Perhaps I will obtain children through her. And Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah. Why is God telling him to listen to her now? Well, and we saw this again here, that Abraham let Sarah do whatever she wanted. So behold, your maid is in your power. Do to her what is good in your sight. We've already identified that those are not good things, right? Sarah treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence.

Again, we've seen this before. But we have things here. It says, And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he was born according to the flesh, persecuted him who was born according to the spirit. Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman. Ishmael was a child of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of Israel. Ishmael was a child of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of Israel. Ishmael was a child of my fleshly longings to be in control, to do what I wanted. And so, yes, it looks similar. But this is completely different. And so he says, Ishmael, the father of the Arabs, must be cast out and will not be, though Semitic, of the promised people.

John 8, 34, Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's descendants, yet you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. And that's what Jesus is basically bringing. As the seed that comes through Isaac, that just because you're born of Abraham, just because you say my father is Abraham, does not make you a child of promise. Basically, it does not save you. And so, and of the son of the maid, I will make a nation also because he is your descendant. God does bless him, but he is not of the covenant people.

Right? And so we saw that even earlier on. As for Ishmael, I've heard you. Behold, I will bless him and will make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of 12 princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, not with Ishmael. So because he came through Abraham, he is still blessing, protecting, but actually this becomes like a bane of Israel's existence. What happens to the Ishmaelites, we're going to see more of that. And what happens, and the interesting thing that we're going to see what happens is that Ishmael very much mimics Isaac. Even this, the father of 12 princes, we see that in the line of Isaac, the 12 tribes.

Verse 14. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder and gave her to the boy and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. And so there are some parallels that are going to happen in chapter 22 next week, which is that there is a rising early in the morning and putting something on the shoulders. So we're seeing a lot of, like, mimicking a lot of things that sound very similar, but it's different. Similar but different. Similar but different. Abraham is entrusting them now to God. Yes, how Sarah is acting is not right. But God says, just do it. Because at the end, I'm working myself in all of this.

We do need to separate them so that there is no confusion as to who the heir is going to come from. Where he is going to be. That when we see where Jesus comes from, it's going to be crystal clear. That there is going to be no question marks about whether this could be the man. And so, I don't know why I put this map. Okay. Verse 15. When the water and the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bow shot away, for she said, do not let me see the boy die. And she sat opposite him and lifted up her voice and wept. So, we should be kind of going back and forth now to what happened in chapter 16. We see that before, she was kind of beelining towards Egypt.

But this time, she's just kind of wandering around this area.

How did I put that? I don't remember. Okay. And then, God heard the lad crying. And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. So, the angel doesn't hear Hagar. He hears Ishmael. And Ishmael, he's a grown boy now. And he's about to die. And again, there's similarities about what happened before that she was going. But remember, in chapter 16, he had already made a promise to Hagar saying that Ishmael is going to become a mighty nation and he is going to reside east of his brothers. And so, maybe, maybe that's why she didn't go down towards Egypt, was wandering in that eastern region.

And Ishmael, as a reminder, it means God who hears. God who hears. So, he says, arise, lift up the lad and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. Where did this well come from? But we know that we are in Beersheba. Now, God was with the lad, and he grew and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. And what we see here is the wilderness of Paran is right there, right above the Sinai Peninsula. So, he does indeed go east. They go east. And so, his prophecy over Ishmael is accomplished.

Now, Beersheba is the new place to remember now. We've been collecting places. Beersheba is crucial. It's crucial. So, oh, I circled it. There it is. And we'll get to why right here as we conclude. Ask questions. So, there's a covenant now that's happening between Abraham and Abimelech. He says, God is with you in all that you do. Abimelech is saying this to Abram. Now, therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my posterity. But according to the kindness that I have shown to you, you shall show to me and to the land in which you have sojourned. So, Abimelech perhaps is some kind of God-fearer at this point. We don't know. But he knows that Abraham is special.

And Abraham said, I swear it. But Abraham complained to Abimelech. And you're like, what is this weird little thing at the end? Because of the well of water which the servants of Abimelech had seized. And Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me, nor did I hear of it until this day. Well, wells are going to be very important moving forward. Hagar already saw one well in Beer, La Jolla, Roy. Remember that one? It was on the way down towards Egypt. And then she found the well and she was saved. This time, she went a little bit more east now to that Beersheba region. And she's wandering around there. But what's interesting is Abraham had already dug a well there in Beersheba.

So, we don't know. Is the well that she saw the one that Abraham had dug? We're not sure. But we do know that he has already dug one. And then Abimelech, his servants are kind of messing with it, right? Messing with him. And wells, the reason why they're so important is because, number one, it's survival. It doesn't matter if you have a home, if there is no well during this time. Remember, there are no faucets. The well is actually the most important thing. And wells are called Beers. That's what well is in Hebrew. Be'er. That's where Beersheba comes from. Or Be'er Lahoy Roy was like well. And it has to do, there's two different types. There's Be'er and then there's something called Bor. Bor is a hole they dug and they would store water in there.

Be'ers were wells where you dig down deep enough and it's like, it's what they would even sometimes call living water. Moving water. Running water. Okay. And that was very important because Boers ran out but the heirs never did. They lasted for generations and they would even last, like some say that we still have them today in the same region. I saw some YouTube videos that were really cool about like they think this was Abraham's well and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. I actually, like you know how like we get really skeptical? Like, oh, can you tell? There's a lot of kind of cool archaeology that goes behind some of that.

Oh, okay. Almost there. Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech and the two of them made a covenant. Then Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. So, like he's making a covenant with him and he sets seven aside and Abimelech says to Abraham, what are these seven for? Which you have set by themselves. And he says, you shall take these seven ewe lambs from my hand so that it may be a witness to me that I dug this well. This is my will. Give it to me. And so at the southern portion here in Beersheba, this is the first time it's called Beersheba. This is where it's named. Before it says that Hagar was in Beersheba, but that's before it was called Beersheba. Anachronism.

Okay. And then because they were there, the two of them took an oath. So they made a covenant at Beersheba. And Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, arose and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham, he plants a tamarisk tree at Beersheba. And there he called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. This is a tamarisk tree. It takes forever to grow. And it has something to do with the everlasting God. And it provides shade. And later on, we'll see images of water, of provision, of shade, even during the time of Elijah. Maybe we'll get there one day. Beersheba means well of seven or well of the oath. Now, the reason why Beersheba is so important, to conclude, is because Beersheba is part of the mantra.

From Dan to Beersheba, all of the promised land of Israel, Beersheba is the southernmost one that's given. Gerar was this tiny little thing. It just kind of said, like, oh, I'm the way here. It was all about Beersheba. So in Judges 21, then all the sons of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead, came out and the congregation assembled as one man to the Lord at Mizpah. 1 Samuel 3.20, all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord. And Abraham, at this point, stakes claim for the first time in this area. Okay? All right, so there's Dan, there's Beersheba. And God is starting his promises. Remember, Beer, Lahoy, Roy was where Hagar had gone earlier on.

Oh, I didn't realize I made this slide. Sorry, this would have made it a lot easier for you to see. But you see how Hagar didn't keep going down towards Egypt, as she did before. She went east. And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines for many days. For many days. And we ask, why? We'll see. Okay? All right, so Genesis 22, the sacrifice of Isaac. All right, so these are the questions for next week. They'll be sent to you. Let me close with some prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this study. We pray, God, even in the deluge of information that's there, God, that we wouldn't get lost in it. But, Father, it would only enhance and make rich. God, that we can see your hand at work.

God, we can see your faithfulness. We can see the intricate ways, the detailed ways in which you work. God, that all that you purpose will be accomplished. Father, in the middle of all this, I pray that we would see your grace, your compassion, your mercy, and your patience. Your love, not only for just Abraham, but, God, for us. As descendants of faith, we can see, Lord, through the pages of Scripture, how much you care for us. Thank you, God. Thank you so much for doing all of this. What it took to save us. It astounds us. Lord, I pray now as we apply these things to our hearts, that in our small groups and in our home groups, that we would worship you not only in words, but in changed lives as we move forward.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you.