Near the end of Isaiah, God says, “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Is 55:11).  God reminds us all of His promise.  He promises to fulfill His purpose.  God fulfills his purpose by His power; He alone has the ability; He alone can.

Abraham and Sarah have a son.  Abraham and Sarah already had a son; well, Abraham had a son by Sarah’s Egyptian slave, Hagar.  Sarah had grown impatient, afraid, hope stumbled, and she decided that she would act, she would force God’s plans, His purpose.  Maybe her decision to force a child was also part of God’s plan.  Yes, beloved, I think it was.  It’s not as if Sarah’s action surprised God—“Oh! I did not see that coming.”  God allows things for our learning, our growing, for wisdom and increase in holiness—which never means we become better than anyone.  Holiness means just this: that we live for God more and more, according more and more to God’s Word.

Abraham has a son of disobedience—like Adam so long before, Abraham listened to the voice of his wife rather than trust the voice of God.  Oh, you women—you are one of the greatest blessings God gives to men, and nearly the biggest source of trouble!  But I suppose you think that about us, too.  Yet we all know the underlying truth: the source of our biggest trouble is not women or men, white or black, Democrat or Republican.  The source of our biggest trouble is always with us, within.  It is sin: that urge to disobedience, the sudden slip into unfaithfulness to God, to God’s promise, that angry, fearful, covetous forgetting of God’s sworn purpose, disregard for God, disregard for His power, disregard for His Word.

The source of our greatest blessing is also always still with us.  We abandon God.  God does not abandon us.  We forget God.  God does not forget us.  We break our promises.  God keeps His.  We are weak, but He is strong.

But what to do about Ishmael? Hagar?  That’s the problem Sarah has now.  Here is the unintended but necessary result of Sarah’s lapse of faith.  I don’t want to be hard on Sarah: I feel her emotions!  She has a son!  She names him laughter, Isaac: she feels such joy because of him.  She had been sure she would remain barren, die barren.  Fear and worry had taken control.  Barren—what a hard word.  What an unfair word.  An ugly word, a judgmental word.  No matter how kind, how generous, truthful or gentle Sarah may have been, she was barren.  That’s what people remembered about her.

But now she has a child, and she laughs to hear his playful, delighted laughter.  He’s between two and three.  It’s a day of celebration, his weaning day.  The baby, wonderfully, suddenly, somehow has become a little boy!  Friends and neighbors are gathering.  There is singing, dancing, laughing, eating, excitement, the hope of promise, a future!

And there is Ishmael, playing with Isaac.  Different traditions about this ancient story have been woven together.  In what I hear today, I have the impression that Ishmael is not much older than Isaac, maybe six.  There the boys are, half-brothers, behaving as brothers do, getting along and sharing one moment, fighting and crying the next.  Playing, mocking.  Normal.  Natural.  The child of Sarah’s shame and the child of Sarah’s joy.

Is it jealousy she feels, seeing Ishmael?  Partly.  That and shame.  Ishmael, and Hagar, are a constant reminder to her of her lack of patience, her desperation and fear, her disobedience.  A witness against her.  Who could live with that, always there, always with you?

Sarah tells Abraham what he needs to do.  That’s a familiar pattern by now.  Righteous, wise counsel is a blessing.  What Sarah tells Abraham to do is not righteous, just human, all too human.  Get rid of them.  Send them away, “for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (21:10).  Strangely, that’s true, prophetic, even, not just vindictive, as it sounds at first.  Sarah doesn’t know it, but God knows.  Ishmael is the son of disobedience, desperation, the son of no faith.  God arranged matters such that Sarah would come to her crisis of faith, such that Abraham would have the opportunity to listen either to the voice of his wife or the voice of God, such that Sarah and Abraham would both have the opportunity to decide how they would live in the knowledge of their disobedience.  Ishmael will not have a share in the inheritance of the land God promised: Ishmael is not the son of the promise.  Ishmael is the son of no faith, and God has compassion and mercy.  God loves Ishmael, too, and Hagar.  He provides.  He blesses.

The inheritance Sarah has in view is the material possessions of Abraham, whom God had blessed with sizeable flocks and herds—great wealth in those times.  Sarah isn’t about to let it be shared with that woman’s brat, that bastard.  The inheritance God has in view is another inheritance altogether.  The purpose God has in view has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth, things, the gaudy costumes of earthly security.  How people focus on stuff!  How miserable we would be without our stuff!

Abraham is broken-hearted (21:11).  Ishmael is his son, too!  Don’t think for a moment that Abraham doesn’t love Ishmael.  Abraham may feel awkward and uncomfortable around Hagar, but not with his son.  What to do?  Now Sarah says send them away, but, how can he?  He has responsibilities to the boy, and to the boy’s mother.  No, it’s wrong!

In the midst of this trouble, this unrest, God speaks.  He tells Abraham to do as Sarah says, not because Sarah’s motivations are right, or her heart, but because God’s purposes are at work.  God can even use Sarah’s vindictiveness, jealousy, and shame to fulfill His own purposes, to make His name known, to hallow His name on earth, to be known truly and be glorified.

God tells Abraham that “it is through Isaac that your offspring shall be reckoned” (21:12).  Offspring.  Ishmael is the offspring of Abraham; no one is denying that.  God regards the matter from the perspective of His promise, purpose, and power.  The offspring God means are not first and foremost genetic offspring.  The children of Abraham are those who have the faith of Abraham, who live in the light of the spirit of God’s promise.  Receiving and cherishing God’s promise gives shape to the future as it shapes the present.  Where faith is vital, central, it is a shaping, driving force.  These are the offspring of Abraham that God means.  Abraham is the beginning of the people God makes for Himself, calls, blesses, sends.  These are the people who will hallow God’s name, make His renown known on earth, so that God may be known truly among mankind, truly, not falsely, hallowed, not ignored, disregarded, or “reimagined.”

Abraham does as Sarah tells him, only this time it is with God’s blessing rather than His disapproving silence.  Early in the morning—it is a hot, dry place, remember, early morning is the time to journey—Abraham provides food and water for Hagar and Ishmael, enough that the bags and skins have to be put on her shoulders.  He sends them away.  How does he do that?  I wonder how?

Only in faith, hope, and love.

We have no reason to believe that Hagar was dull or unresourceful.  The land was populated, sparsely in some stretches, but populated.  And Hagar is lost, wandering in the desert.  I suppose that was how she felt inside, too: stunned, abandoned, numb, condemned.  I don’t know how long Hagar had been a slave, maybe only a few years, maybe decades.  Abraham built altars, offered sacrifices.  It wasn’t as if Hagar never knew that Abraham had a God.  It wasn’t as if Hagar never had opportunity to know this God herself, to seek Him, seek Him with her heart, to listen for His Word, to live to serve Him, even as a slave on this earth.  She doesn’t.  She wanders, lost.  She wanders in the desert: dry, hot, where water is scarce and precious.  Abraham sent her with water, and with food.  Perhaps he had been offering her food and water for years, the food and water of his faith, of his God.  Hagar didn’t want that food or that water.  God wasn’t the food for which she hungered.  God wasn’t the water for which she thirsted.

Now, as though she had no resources, no way, no hope, she wanders and is lost.  Did she then, finally, pray, fall to her knees and cry out to God?  No.  She eats the food, drinks the water until all is consumed.  Then, she leaves Ishmael under a bush, helpless, suffering—what agony for any mother, yet what could she do?!  She didn’t have any food to give!  She didn’t have any water!  All she had was her despair and her sorrow, her bitterness and her anger.  She collapses and cries, cries to herself: hard, proud tears.  For each Ruth, there are many Hagars.

What does Scripture tell us, as we see Ishmael, helpless, suffering, under a bush, and there, at a distance, Hagar, weeping to herself?  “God heard the boy crying” (21:17).  God had been listening, watching, all along.  It isn’t as though God is unaware, beloved: “Oh! How did I miss that!?”  God heard.  God called to Hagar, who had been as a stranger to God.

Do you hear what is happening?  Once again, God takes the initiative.  God reaches out, calling, acting, offering blessing: this is of the essence of promise, purpose, and power, election, salvation.  God is offering salvation to Hagar and her son.  “Do not be afraid,” the angel of the Lord says to her, “God has heard the boy crying [. . . .] Lift up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation” (21:17-18).  Do not be afraid.  What is the opposite of fear: courage, strength?  No.  Faith.  Do not be afraid; have faith.

God showed Hagar a well, guides her to water (21:19).  Oh, how she drinks, and is glad, and gives water to her child—he will live, now: they both will live!  Hagar completely misses what God is showing her, what He has just done for her and her child.  Oh, she sees the well, and she drinks to her heart’s content; indeed, “he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (Ps 107:9), but she entirely misses the point: her mind, her heart, her soul don’t perceive it.  God is showing her that He is the Well from which she may always draw waters for life, if she will trust, receive, believe.  Does she?  We have her answer: no.

Beloved, God’s purpose is always at work, and always contending with human lack of interest.  God offers the waters for life.  People take the cup, drink, wipe their mouths, and go about their business, without so much as a nod of the head or a mumbled thanks.  They’re busy with the business of their heart’s desire, pursuing their idols, minds trailing along behind, feverishly working to keep up, justifying each choice, each action.  Enslaved.  In the desert.

We read this book.  We find that what people are told to do, there, does not match up very well with what people are doing, here.  We see it in our own lives: that’s painful enough!  We see it all around us and wonder how we ever thought to notice.  God’s purpose, in fulfilment of His promise, by His power.  He will be known rightly, truly, beloved.  For His own, blessed, purposes, by His own inscrutable will, He has called us into this promise, praise and glory be to His name!  Amen.

But what about Hagar, Ishmael, all the Hagars, all the Ishmaels?  When Ishmael came of age, Hagar “got a wife for him from Egypt” (21:21).  Being Egyptian herself, I suppose that makes sense.  An Egyptian wife brings into the marriage her Egyptian gods.  Ishmael either puts up with his wife’s religion, or else he comes to join in her religion.  We know all about that.  It seems Ishmael grew up with no religion to speak of.  He became skillful with bow and arrow, a hunter, maybe a raider: a forceful man, a man of action.  He didn’t need any supposed God to rely upon.  Ishmael relied upon Ishmael: his strength, his smarts, his weapons, his plans.  What he learned about religion from his mother was that religion was for women and children.

Nothing God has done for Hagar and Ishmael made any lasting impression.  They don’t seek him; they don’t seek His will; they don’t seek His Word.  But what has He done for them, right?  I mean, really?  What’s so great about this God of Abraham?  What’s He ever done, for anybody?  And God continues to work out His purpose on an earth where that is the response He finds all too often.

Remember the wonders he has done,

his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,

you his servants, the descendants of Abraham,

his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.

He is the Lord our God;

his judgments are in all the earth.

He remembers his covenant forever,

the promise he made, for a thousand generations,

the covenant he made with Abraham,

the oath he swore to Isaac.  (Ps 105:5-9)