Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #19 of Genesis, chapter 21.  I am going to read Genesis 21:12-16:

And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave itunto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.

We have been following this narrative in the Bible.  God commands people to read His Word and listen to His voice.  That is what we are trying to do.  This account is written in the book of Genesis and it is part of the Pentateuch that God moved Moses to write.  It is also called the Law.  God said in Galatians 4:21:

Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

Do you not hear the law?  It may sound like a strange thing to say, but it really is not.  There were many people in Old Testament times and in the New Testament modern time that would respond, “Yes, I hear the Law.  You have written Laws concerning the sowing of seed and not yoking an ass and an ox together.  You have given all kinds of Laws.  In Israel, they would say, “We hear the Law, like the Law concerning the Seventh Day Saturday Sabbath.  You have given the Law of circumcision, and we hear that law.”  They would hear those Laws and they would seek to obey in an outward, physical way.  They would be zealous to circumcise their sons according to the dictates that God laid out.  They would be zealous to keep the Sabbath Day.  We can see that in the Gospel accounts.  And, yet, they did not “hear” the Law, because God has in mind the deeper spiritual meaning.  It was like when the Lord Jesus Christ would speak a parable and then He would add, “He that hath ears to hear, let him here.”  Do you hear the parable?  Again, true “hearing” is when we understand the spiritual teaching because the Bible is a spiritual book.  If we are just staying on the surface of the Scriptures and we understand the outward Law as it is written, we are not hearing the Law. 

After God said, “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?,” God went on to say in Galatians 4:22-25:

For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

What is being referred to in Galatians 4?  Where did He get this historical information?  It was from the Law in Genesis 21.  God call it an allegory.  This is irrefutable proof that we are to understand the entire Bible in the same way as when Christ spoke a parable.  We must understand what the parable represents.  We read the historical narrative in the book of Genesis and we must look for the spiritual meaning.  This is justification and verification for how the reader of the Bible is supposed to come to the Bible.  As we search the Scriptures, we must look for deeper spiritual meaning.  If we did not have these verses in Galatians 4, I could say of this historical account, “It is all an allegory.  Sarah represents one covenant and Hagar represents another covenant.  And Isaac represents the covenant of promise or grace.  And Ishmael, born of the bondwoman, represents the covenant that has to do with the Law of God and a covenant of works,” and people would accuse me of over-spiritualizing.  They made that charge against a good and faithful man like Mr. Camping, and they make that charge against anyone that goes to the Bible looking for deeper spiritual meaning, even though this is what the Bible commands us to do.  But they cannot criticize it in this case because God has interpreted it for us in Galatians 4.  You would think they would learn, as well as we have, because God is covering several chapters in the book of Genesis, calling it an allegory and calling them “types and figures” of His covenants as He lays out the spiritual teaching.  You would think that would be sufficient for us to go to the rest of the book of Genesis and every book in the Bible to examine the Word of God in a spiritual way, looking for the deeper spiritual meaning.  You would think they would agree with that, but in their blindness, they are ignorant.  To be ignorant means to lack understanding, and that is what spiritual blindness means.  It is to be in the dark without the spiritual light of the truth shining through.

In their spiritual ignorance, they have developed another maxim of theological restraint, and they say, “Well, if God interprets something spiritually in the New Testament that He had given in the Old Testament, then it is fine in that case.”  That’s “big of them,” is it not?  Is it not “big of them” to allow God’s people to understand the spiritual meaning if God has explained it?  They would allow or permit the Lord’s people to understand this specific instance, but when we try to apply this method outside of the things God has outright explained, then they will not accept it.  God speaks of Sarah and Hagar and their children, but as we move on to another chapter in Genesis and we start looking for a spiritual meaning using the same methodology, they say, “You are spiritualizing!  You must stop – you are destroying the Word of God.”  No – we are simply following God’s guidelines as the Holy Spirit leads us and Christ teaches us. 

When we think of the Lord Jesus, why did He teach the way He taught?  I do not know if you have ever considered this, but when Jesus, who is God Himself, came down from on high and entered the human race, He spent three and one-half years ministering to the people, and He taught them; and the Bible says He spoke in parables and “without a parable spake he not unto them.”  Would that not have been an excellent opportunity for Him to have explained to us how we must understand the Bible?  He could have said, “When I am speaking to you, just listen for the plain, literal words I say – do not seek anything deeper.  Do not try to look in depth at the words I am speaking.  Just take it literally.”  Why did He not say that?  Why, instead, did He speak in parables and without a parable He did not speak?  When the disciples did take him literally when the Lord was admonishing them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, Christ asked them how it was that they did not understand the miracle of the loaves.  Christ was warning them about the Pharisees’ doctrine, but they thought it was because they had not brought bread.  They were thinking literally and plainly when Christ was warning them about the doctrine of the Pharisees.  How do you get a plain literal understanding of leaven as “doctrine”?  It would be impossible to understand it. 

The hermeneutic of the apostate corporate churches, which is worldwide in scope, is apostacy.  It is designed to keep people from the truth and to hold back the spiritual understanding of the Bible from the reader.  They have developed this teaching tool that is like themselves.  It will keep people in the dark, just as they are in the dark.

In Galatians 4 God is telling us the spiritual meaning of a huge section of the book of Genesis.  It encourages us to look for the allegorical or deeper spiritual meaning, showing us Hagar as the head of the covenant that represents the flesh and Ishmael as a child of that covenant. 

Then it goes on to say in Galatians 4:28-31:

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

Here is an important truth, as God is basically quoting Sarah: “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.”  Why?  “For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.”  To be an heir has to do with receiving the inheritance of God.  God had made known to Abraham that his inheritance would involve receiving the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and so forth.  It would go through Isaac – he was the seed.  Isaac would receive the inheritance.  What does Galatians tell us in chapter 3?  The promised “seed” points to Christ (singular), and then we are told in Galatians 3:29 that all those in Christ are counted for the “seed.”  So, all the elect people of God are identified with Isaac.  And all the non-elect (unsaved) people that would come into an outward relationship with the Gospel over the many centuries of the church age and during this end-time period would be identified with Ishmael, the children of the flesh.

This is important because Hagar and Ishmael were cast out because God was establishing a picture of who would be the rightful heir and receive the inheritance.  It says in Genesis 21:12:

And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

In Christ, the seed will come forth and all that are in Him are counted for the seed.

It says in Genesis 21:13:

And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.

We will talk about this later because it will come up after Hagar and Ishmael were driven out, so we will put discussion of this verse on hold until later.

Then it says in Genesis 21:14:

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

Abraham obeyed God.  He hearkened to the voice of his wife as God had told him to do, and he cast out Hagar, the bondwoman, and her son Ishmael, who was also Abraham’s son.  From everything we can gather, Abraham loved Ishmael.  Ishmael was his son and Abraham was the true and rightful father of Ishmael, so we can see why God told Abraham, “Let it not be grievous.”  And it must have been very grievous to him. 

But what is more stunning is that in driving out Hagar and Ishmael, he gave them only bread and a bottle of water.  You know, Abraham was a rich man.  He had riches given to him from Pharaoh years earlier, and he had riches given to him from Abimelech, king of one of the cities of the Philistines.  He had much livestock and animals of every sort, which was really a barometer of wealth at that time.  You could tell how rich a man was by the number of livestock he had.  He had hundreds of servants.  He must have had a great amount of food and, yet, he cast out his wife and his own son and he did not give them anything of any value.  When we read this and we think about it in terms of Abraham’s great wealth, the fact that they were cast out with essentially nothing is surprising.  Hagar was cast out with only her son.  Ishmael was not a little boy at this time, even though the language used here gives that idea.  We know that Ishmael was 14 when Isaac was born.  Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 years old, and Isaac was born when Isaac was 100 years old.  Isaac had been weaned from his mother’s milk, and there are some indicators that a child would be weaned at about the age of two.  We can use that as an estimate, so since this happened at the point of Isaac’s weaning, we could say that Ishmael is about 16 years old.  And, yet, he is still a youth and he is Abraham’s own flesh and blood.  Abraham drove out his own flesh and blood and the boy’s mother, and he is giving them nothing except some bread and a bottle of water – a single bottle of water.  They are in the wilderness under a hot sun and there was nowhere for them to get food or drink until God showed Hagar a well of water, so it was very dangerous for them to go out in the elements of the wilderness of Beersheba.  They had not tent.  They had insufficient food and water. 

Not only that, but they had no gifts.  Was Abraham a skinflint, as the expression goes?  Was he cheap?  Was he trying to save his wealth?  No – God set up these circumstances; things happened exactly as God willed for it to happen.  It had to happen this way because God is making it known that there is a distinction between these two boys.  One would receive the blessing and will inherit God’s holy mountain, as it were.  The other will not receive the blessing and will not inherit anything: “Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.”  It is the time of separation on God’s part regarding who is to receive the blessing and who is not to receive the inheritance.  If Abraham had given anything to them or shown some kindness…we would expect he would have given them a few little things to them out of human kindness.  But if he had given any gift to Hagar, it could be misconstrued.  It would be very difficult to explain on the spiritual level because a gift would appear to be part of an inheritance.  And Ishmael through Hagar and the covenant she represented could not inherit anything.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will continue to look at this very important information God is revealing to us.  It is going to get into the nature of the true Gospel, the Gospel of grace and not of works.  The Lord is going to make that point very strongly in this chapter.