Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #20 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 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. 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.

This is a very sorrowful situation.  Hagar seems hopeless.  And this is a good thing.  Why?  Historically, it was not a good thing for her, but as far as who she represents, it is a different matter.  We always must keep that in mind.  Hagar’s personal sorrow took place thousands of years ago, so we do not have to feel sorry for her now.  God used her sorrow over her son as a spiritual picture or allegory.  She represents the covenant of works.  Think about this.  The character of people that enter into that covenant of works with gospels is that they try to get right with God by keep the Law or trying to be a “good” person.  They try to add their work to grace, but one consistent thing with the works gospels is that they continually attempt to add their own works and they believe they will succeed.  And they think that they and those that follow them (their children) will gain entry into the kingdom of God.

But, here, Hagar, who represents the covenant of works, has realized that her “works” have not been able to bring her an inheritance for herself or for her son.  That is very important, and we need to keep this in mind as we continue our study because God is trying to emphasize something.

You know, this is another one of those passages that I have read over and over, and I thought, “It does not seem like there is much going on here.  The bondwoman had been driven out.  We know she represents a covenant, but then these verses from Genesis 21:13-21 do not seem to have much spiritual information.  However, I have seen this happen several times when I look at a passage and I do not understand it and, therefore, I do not know what to teach regarding the Gospel meaning.  But then I continue to read…and that is why I am glad we keep reading the same verses before every study.  That is a good habit for you and me.  We keep reading and we keep praying.  We keep comparing Scripture with Scripture, waiting on the Lord to open our understanding.  And many times, I am glad to say the Lord has had mercy and bestowed His grace in opening up some understanding into areas I had thought were not very “meaty,” spiritually.

It is like when you come home late for dinner and the chicken dish is in the kitchen, but everyone else has eaten, so there is just a little “meat” left on the bone.  And, sometimes, that is how I have looked at some passages in the Bible that appear to be scant, but there is plenty!  There is more than enough that God has stored in reserve in every verse in the Bible.  Our problem is our limitations in intelligence and, of course, we are completely dependent on God for giving us spiritual understanding.  And it is not always God’s good pleasure to do so at times, but I am glad the Lord has opened up some extremely important truths for the time period in which we live.

In this case, it has to do with God’s Gospel and how God has saved His people in contrast to all the other gospels mankind has put forth, like all the works related religions and false gospels that have been developed.  God will make an emphasis on the true Gospel here.

So, Abraham was a very wealthy man who had true care and concern toward Ishmael and also toward Hagar, the mother of this son.  But his wife Sarah had told him to cast Hagar and her son out (and God had confirmed it), and God would emphasize the spiritual reason for this.  It was because Ishmael would not be the heir and inheritor of God’s rich spiritual blessings.  Ishmael was under the covenant of works where there is a relationship to God through works, but the seed would be through Isaac, as God had said in Genesis 21:12:

Hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

God was very careful in painting this spiritual picture, as He gave Abraham the mindset not to do what we would have thought to be natural in such a touchy and grievous situation.  Most people would have tried to soothe and comfort Hagar and her son as much as possible.  And, if a person was wealthy, he would have loaded up some asses with talents of gold and silver, plenty of food and maybe several animals and even several servants to watch over them and protect them.  Then he would send them on the way with a nice send-off, but that is contrary to the spiritual picture God wanted to paint. 

Hagar represented a covenant that is not a faithful covenant, and not the covenant God designed.  Well, maybe that is not correct because God did set up a covenant with mankind wherein they must keep His Law perfectly.  If mas was able to keep God’s Law perfectly, he would live forever.  But none can keep the Law perfectly, so it becomes a false gospel, especially when people put forth certain works to keep the covenant, like being water baptized, accepting Christ or walking down the aisle.  All these things come under the heading of Hagar and the covenant of “mount Sinai” or the Law of God. 

So, God wanted to make it crystal clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that no children of that covenant would be pleasing to Him, even though some of them may understand many things of the Bible, but they add just a little bit of “work” to God’s grace.  God warned against that when He commanded Moses and the congregation of Israel to stone to death the man who picked up a few sticks on the Sabbath Day.  There could be no works of any kind performed by man.  That is why God gave the Sabbath and the Law that accompanied it: “Ye shall do no work therein.”  It was the day God rested from His work of creation.  In the Old Testament, for over elven thousand years it was the day that God commanded that no work of any kind was to be performed.  God jealously safeguarded and protected His Gospel program, the Gospel of the faith of Christ and the work of Christ alone.  Christ did all the saving.  We are saved by God, as it says in John 1 where God tells us in a very straightforward way how someone is born again, or not born again.  It says in John 1:13:

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

That describes the whole Gospel.  There is the true Gospel of the Bible.  Salvation is of the Lord.  Salvation is God’s doing.  He predestinated those He would save before the foundation of the world.  He died and paid the penalty for sin for certain souls He had elected to salvation before they ever existed and that, too, was accomplished at the foundation of the world.  That is when the works were finished, according to Hebrews 4:3.  Then He brought His Word to the ears of each one of these elect at some point in their lives until the last one was saved.  It was all performed by God.  He did the whole work of salvation.  And He is a jealous God and He will not share His glory with another.  But here comes man, who was called by the Gospel.  He heard the Word of God, the Bible, during the church age when he went to church, but man pollutes and perverts the true Gospel.  It is within his fallen nature because he is a sinner.  Unless he is born again, he will do this naturally.  So, man sees the true Gospel laid out on the pages of the Bible, but he sees a verse that says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved…”  He seizes upon it and says, “This is how you get saved.  You just have to believe.”  But he is not being careful and diligent in studying the Scriptures to see that God commands us to believe, as it says in 1John.  And because God commands us to believe, that makes “believing” or “faith” a work.  A work is any attempted or actual obedience to the commandments of God. 

God told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son, and Abraham went.  That was a work – it was an act of obedience to a command of God.  The Bible says that we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is a command, so man says, “Yes, I will believe.”  And there is an attempted act of obedience, a work.  That will condemn a man, because when you go down that road in trying to get right with God by keeping the Law, you are condemned.  The act of exercising belief is obeying the Law of faith: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  A man may say, “I know I cannot do all the other Laws, but I can obey that one Law.”  Then he brings himself under the whole Law of God because the entire Bible is the Law book of God.  Man would have to keep all the Law (perfectly) and, of course, man cannot do that and, therefore, he has entered into the covenant of mount Sinai.  Hagar is the figurehead and he becomes a child of the bondwoman and is in bondage himself. 

Those under this covenant are numerous.  The whole corporate church world today has come under that category.  God has already separated the wheat from the tares and there is no wheat within the world’s congregations.  The elect came out when God drew us out.  God brought us all out, so now there is a corporate church with a population of about 2 billion professed Christians that are all in covenant with God through the keeping of a Law.  Just check their doctrines and confessions.  Even the Reformers that are the most closely aligned to correct doctrine (through their belief in election) speak out of both sides of their mouths: “Yes, we are saved by election.  It is all by predestination, except you must believe.”  You see, there is confusion, which was probably left over from the church age.  And they have not received correction from the Spirit of God, even though God brought that correction in these last days.  But they have despised it, identifying it with over-spiritualizing.  They are hearing it from people that also told them the church age is over, so they resist it and turn from it.  But that has been their destruction.

So, here in Genesis 21 when God drove out the bondwoman and her son, Ishmael is representing an enormous number of professed Christians and, possibly others that stand in a works relationship to God.  That is why God caused Abraham to act in the way he did toward Hagar and Ishmael.  Maybe Sarah was instrumental in this action, historically, as Sarah may have felt hostile toward Hagar and her son that had mocked Isaac.  We do not know all the circumstances, but we do know that Abraham sent her away with nothing, except bread and one bottle of water.  There were no riches.  There was no livestock.  There were no servants.  There were no donkeys, mules or oxen to carry them or their things.  There was nothing.  They were sent away in poverty.  They were sent out into the wilderness: “Cast out the bondwoman.”  The word translated as “cast out” is the same word that is translated as “drive out.”  It is the same word that was used regarding Cain when God drove him into the wilderness.  It is a judgment of God.

But God has more to say about Ishmael later, and we will spend some time looking at that.  But, here, the important thing is that by allowing Abraham to cast out the bondwoman and her son with only the clothes on their back and just enough bread and water to keep them alive a couple of days, God is indicating that this is what will happen to those that enter into a works relationship with Him and, yet, fail to keep the whole Law.  They will be punished.  They will experience poverty, as it tells us in Proverbs that their poverty is their destruction.  They will have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.  They will not experience the riches and blessings and the tremendous things God has promised to His people for evermore.  There are many more that remain in this poverty than the remnant that are blessed by God’s salvation.   Those represented by Ishmael are the majority and they will receive nothing.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we spend more time on this matter because it is such an important principal and truth that the Lord is teaching.