Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is study #7 of Genesis, chapter 16 and we are going to read Genesis 16:6-14:

But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. And the angel of JEHOVAH found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because JEHOVAH hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of JEHOVAH that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? Wherefore the well was called Beerlahairoi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

I will stop reading there. We have been spending some time with this because it is an important Biblical principal that God has established two covenants and mankind will fall under either one or the other. They are covenants that are represented by Sarai and Hagar and by their children. We have seen that the Lord identifies Hagar with bondage. She was an Egyptian and Egypt was the house of bondage and her children are in bondage with her.

Sarai is identified with the Gospel of grace which God has given by promise and her children are free. To be free identifies with being free from the bondage to sin and to Satan. Remember what Jesus said in John 8:31-36:

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Hagar was a servant and she was in servitude to her mistress and to Abram. Children born of her, likewise, would be bondservants. God uses her to typify the covenant that ties in with mount Sinai where the law was given and, therefore, with all those who seek to get right with God through the keeping of the law. It does not matter what law it is. The Israelites thought they could get right with God through keeping the law of circumcision or the law of certain sacrifices or observing certain feast days or the Sabbath. They were under the covenant of Hagar, even though we normally think of Hagar and her child Ishmael as representatives of the Arab nations. We know the Arab nations have become mostly Muslim, another religion. And, yet, God ties in the unsaved people of Israel (as well as the unsaved in the corporate church) to Hagar and to being children of Hagar, just like Ishmael. Someone might say, “Where do you read that?” Let us turn to Romans 9:6:

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

This is a very important truth that a great many theologians and pastors that are enamored with Israel fail to see. As God put it, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” Not all the physical descendants of Abraham are spiritual Israel, the Israel that identify as the people of God more than the physical people of Abraham. Yes, the true people of Israel could be descendants of Abraham, but still be Gentiles, as it says earlier in Romans 2:28-29:

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

Again, God is making a distinction between “Jews” and He is saying an amazing thing when He says that the physical descendants of Abraham that came trace their physical roots back to Abraham are not “Jews.” The Bible says, “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly…but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly.” It is not one who is circumcised in the flesh, but it is one that is circumcised in the heart. Of course, you cannot literally be circumcised in the heart because you would die. It is not a matter of taking a sharp knife to the heart – it is not speaking here of a physical heart, but it refers to the soul. Heart, mind and soul are synonyms and it is referring to the “circumcision” of the soul of a person, which occurs when God saved that individual. He took out their heart of stone (their old dead soul) and gave them a heart of flesh. That can be a little confusing, but the latter is a figure which represents that which is “pliable” and it is no longer like stone that is “hard hearted,” but it is now “soft” toward God and doing the will of God. It is the new resurrected spirit that is in view when we read of “circumcision of the heart.” And when someone receives a new resurrected spirit, they have been born again of the Spirit and they become a child of God. He or she is brought in to the tribe of spiritual Israel. All the elect become “Israel” and that is why it says in Romans 11:25:

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

The “fulness of the Gentiles” refers to the fulness of the nations. It goes on to say in Romans 11:26:

And so, or in this manner, all Israel shall be saved…

This refers to spiritual Israel which, physically, includes both Jews and Gentiles. God is no respecter of persons and He saved people of every tribe, nation and tongue. Everyone He saved became part of spiritual Israel.

But, of course, the churches (which have been given over to their natural minds) read Romans 11:26 where it says, “And so, or in this manner, all Israel shall be saved,” and they conclude that God has a grand plan later in history to save all physical Israel or all the Jews over in the Middle East. Again, this is a total misunderstanding of the Word of God. The Word of God speaks on a level they are not able to perceive on a deeper spiritual level. They cannot comprehend it and, as the saying goes, “It goes right over their heads.”

Again, it says in Romans 9:6:

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

We could say the same thing concerning professed Christians during the New Testament church age. We could say, “During the church age, they are not all Christians, which are of Christianity.” It is a truth that can be carried over to the church age and even today when the church age has come to a close and there are believers outside the churches, but not all of them are true believers because there is an element of the flesh, the other covenant represented by Hagar. People entered into national Israel and they thought they were the people of God, but they never truly were. People entered into the churches and they thought they were the people of God, but they never were. Now when the church age is over, there are other people that think they are the people of God, but they never were. “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” Then it says in Romans 9:7:

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.

God promised Abraham he would have a seed. We know that Galatians tells us the seed (singular) identifies with the Lord Jesus Christ, be we are also told that all the elect are in Christ and counted for the seed, so we are all spiritual Israel if we are truly saved. We are the children of Abraham, the spiritual seed of Abraham or the seed of promise.

Again, it says in Romans 9:7-8:

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

Referring to “the children of the flesh,” we could go back to that verse in Romans 2, where it refers to those that are circumcised outwardly in the flesh; they have an outward identification with the kingdom of God. The nation of Israel was the representation of that kingdom for thousands of years and then the churches became the representation of that kingdom. There was an outward identification with God through the law or through their relationship to the Bible, which is the law of God, but the children of the flesh are not the children of God, “but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.”

Let us compare Romans 9, verse 8 with Galatians 4:23:

But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

Children of the bondwoman are born after the flesh. Children of the freewoman are born by promise. Again, it says in Romans 9:8:

That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

We have the same two groups or the same two offspring, one of the flesh and one of the promise, and, yet, God is speaking of Israel. Not all Israel are of Israel because many of Israel were children of the flesh. They were under the covenant of Hagar. We have the remnant of Israel, like the seven thousand that did not bow the knee to Baal and they are children of the promise. It is always a remnant among the greater whole, just as was true within the churches and congregations. When it came to the end and the time when God was separating the wheat and the tares, another way to say that same thing is that God was making a distinction between the two covenants. Or, we could say that God was dividing the “flesh” from the “spirit,” as it says in Romans 8:8-9:

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

This is a very simple definition for being in the Spirit or being in the flesh. If a person has the Spirit of Christ within, it means God has saved him. God has circumcised the heart of that person and he has given him a new born again soul and the indwelling Spirit. Therefore, he is in the spirit and a child of promise.

Anyone lacking the Spirit of Christ has not been born again and he is a child of the flesh, even though he may think he is born again and he may try to conduct himself like he has been born again and is a child of God. The reality is that he is under another covenant, not the covenant as represented by Sarai but by Hagar.

When people say they are Christians, it is like they are saying they are children of God that have been begotten of the Spirit, but they were born through some idea that they did something in relationship to the Bible that brought salvation and, yet, they do not have the Spirit of Christ. As Jesus said in John, chapter 3, “Ye must be born again. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Yes – it is true that a child born physically into the world is born in the flesh, but there is also a spiritual level to this, as we saw that the children of Hagar were children of the flesh are “born” based upon a wrong idea, a false gospel or a misconception of the Bible’s teaching and they come to believe they are a child of God, but they are “of the flesh.” They have been gendered by the flesh. They have an outward identification with God and His kingdom, but they are not truly born again. So, God makes a distinction between those born of the flesh and those born of Spirit and this is why it is so interesting to read about a man that has committed terrible sin (fornication with his father’s wife) and the Apostle Paul, the missionary to the Gentiles, is passing judgment, as it says in 1Corinthians 5:3-5:

For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

This is historical and it refers to a man that was cast out or excommunicated from the church, but that is not the purpose for God writing these words. God has in view the end of the church age and the Apostle Paul is a picture of God Himself passing judgment upon the corrupt corporate church that was involved in fornication. The judgment was to deliver the corporate church to Satan, which would result in the destruction of the flesh or the destruction of all the tares, the unsaved people that were under the covenant of Hagar. They were the ones that had a time allotted by God to come out of the churches and enter into the world where the Latter Rain would be poured out and salvation could take place during the last part of the Great Tribulation. God called out all the elect or all that had the Spirit. Remember, you are in the spirit if you have the Spirit of Christ dwelling within. All the children of promise (of Sarai) were removed from the churches. There was a separation of Sarai and Hagar and their offspring.

When we go back to Genesis 16 we find that God went after Hagar, spoke to her and commanded her to return and submit herself to her mistress. He told here, “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.” He was referring to the seed of the covenant that identified with mount Sinai in Arabia or the “fleshly” seed that would develop in the churches and congregations of the world.

You know, by the end of the Great Tribulation (which concluded on May 21, 2011), there were about two billion professed Christians in the world and of that number only a remnant had come out of the churches and congregations. God had made a distinction between the two and He fulfilled His promise to Hagar, spiritually, concerning her seed. They were children of the flesh and they could not be numbered for multitude – the “two billion” is an estimate and we cannot know the exact number. But there were an enormous number of tares, the children of the flesh, that had identification with the Word of God and His kingdom, but they were not truly saved.

At this point in the historical account, it was not the time for Hagar to go to Egypt, even though she was on her way to Shur, which is over against Egypt. It was not the time to bring her conceived seed in to the house of bondage, but later the churches would become Egypt, as it says in Revelation, chapter 11 where the two witnesses are lying dead in the street of the city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. When the churches would become spiritual Egypt at the time of the end, then all the children of Hagar will return; the children of the flesh will return to Egypt and enter the house of bondage to become bondmen and bondwomen, just as their mother that represented the covenant they are under.