Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #21 of Genesis, chapter 21.  I am going to read Genesis 21:14-16:

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.

We have been spending some time in these verses, and it is a good thing to spend time considering what God has said instead of just rushing through the Bible to get it done, so we can say, “I am going to study the book of Genesis, so let me just run through the chapters, and then I can say I have studied the book of Genesis.”  That is not the purpose of Bible study.  The purpose is to learn the Bible and to study the things God has said to discover truth.  When we learn about truth, we are learning about Christ, God Himself.

So, here, we are considering this historical situation.  It is an historical parable pointing to the time of the end of the world when God would make known who His people are, and who are not His people.  When we look at the end time in which we find ourselves – like when we look back on the Great Tribulation or as we look at our current situation of being alive and remaining on the earth in the Day of Judgment – we see that God has done one thing beyond judging the churches and judging the world.  He has done something that we have discovered recently, which has been hidden in the Bible, especially in the book of Genesis.  He has brought to pass a time of separation when He would let it be known who His blessed people are and who are not His blessed people. 

In the book of Genesis, we saw this picture of separation in the historical account of Cain and Abel.  Remember, in the King James Bible, it said, “in the process of time,” but in the original Hebrew it said, “in the end of days,” and then in the historical narrative God let it be known to Cain and Abel that He expected an offering.  Then God accepted Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s offering.  That “acceptable offering” by Abel was pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ and He was the one in whom Abel trusted.  The “unacceptable offering” made by Cain was his own “work.” 

So, we have the same two covenants in view there as we see here in Genesis 21.  God accepted the person of Abel because he was under the covenant of grace or promise, saved by the faith of Christ.  He did not accept Cain’s offering because Cain was trusting in the work itself and not what the offering pointed to, which was the work of Christ.

Later in the book of Genesis God will make the same distinction between Jacob and Esau.  They will enter into history and there will come a time in the lives of Jacob and Esau when Isaac will make known which one of them will get the blessing and which one will not get the blessing.  It would be Jacob that received the blessing of God, but Esau did not.  Again, they were two brothers, but they were under different covenants or different figureheads.  We could say that Jacob was under the figurehead of Sarah and Esau was under the figurehead of Hagar.  It is the same idea.  The Gospel is the whole Bible and, yet, it does revolve around key themes.  And one central message of the whole Bible is that God saves (only) by grace.  It is through His work and it is never through the effort or work of man in any way.  God tells us the same thing in many different forms, as He paints the same spiritual picture, which He is doing again in Genesis 21 when He causes Sarah and Isaac to remain in the house of Abraham and He drives out Hagar and her son Ishmael.  This identifies with the time of the end.  It was at the time of the end after almost two thousand years of the church era that God finally made known who His acceptable people were by calling them out of the churches.  Not everyone that came out was “wheat,” but those that remained behind were tares.  They were not acceptable in God’s sight.  Those elect that came out would receive the blessing and those that stayed behind would be hated, as they identified with Esau.  What God has done during this time period is to make His people known and He is also letting those that are not His people know that they are not acceptable to Him based on their works.

So, Hagar was driven out as the mother of the covenant God identifies with mount Sinai in Arabia, which represents the Law.  She has a son and they have been driven out from Abraham and his camp, and she is driven out with nothing.  She has no inheritance for her son Ishmael.  She has nothing but a little bread and water.  Of course, we are familiar with how “bread and water” in the Bible relates to the Word of God, the Bible.  In other words, God is saying to Ishmael and to the enormous number of people that will identify with the gospel of works that they will not be accepted based on their works.  It does not matter how great the work or how little the work they claim, like “accepting Christ,” but they will not become saved to be the inheritors of the kingdom of God.  They will not receive the Promised Land of the new heaven and new earth.  They will not receive eternal life.  They will get nothing at all because they trusted in their works and they tried to be pleasing to God through their own efforts and through their own keeping of the Law.  Therefore, God would drive them out.

God drove out the entire corporate church world.  Yes, I know it was the elect that came out of the churches, but as far as the Word of God is concerned, God drove them out from representing His kingdom.  Their only identification with the kingdom of God was that they were His outward representatives to the world.  In ending the church age, God distanced Himself from all those professed Christians and, for all intents and purposes, He drove out all professed Christianity, except for His elect people that have our citizenship in His heavenly kingdom through the Lord Jesus Christ.  We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  At the same time, He sent forth the Gospel, the “bread and water,” into the nations of the world and He saved the great multitude that were outside of the churches.  So, in driving out Hagar and her son, God was basically presenting the true Gospel to all those in the churches: “You cannot get right with me based on your water baptism, based on observing the Lord’s Table or based on accepting Christ with the stamp of approval from your pastor or priest.  That will not gain you entry into my kingdom.  You are cast out.” 

That is the underlying theme of these verses.  Again, 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.

We saw that Abraham gave her nothing.  He could not give her anything because it would have painted the wrong spiritual picture.  God is very careful with the pictures He paints.  He is very meticulous in taking care that the historical parable matches with the spiritual truth He intends for it to teach.  If it did not match up, that would be a problem.  So God made sure Hagar and her son inherited nothing.  He did so because of a Biblical principal we find in Galatians 3:16-18:

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

If we just slowly spend some time thinking about that, God is saying that if the inheritance be of the law, then it is through Hagar who represents “mount Sinai” or the Law.  Her son Ishmael was a child of the bondwoman, representing the children of the Law that are under the covenant of works.  The whole point Sarah was making was that Abraham should drive out the bondwoman and her son because he would not be heir with her son; that is, Ishmael would receive no inheritance: “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.”  Through Sarah, the seed was born, as Isaac typified Christ and all those that are saved in Christ are also counted for the seed.  That is the undercurrent of what is going on in Genesis 21 as Hagar is cast out with nothing – there is no inheritance, not even a handbreadth.  She got nothing but “bread and water.”  In other words, they could have the Word of God and, perhaps, God would still have mercy upon them, as long as it was still the day of salvation, but they would receive no inheritance because they had not boldly come to the throne of grace in a right way, seeking His mercy and looking to Him for everything, realizing that they could do nothing to merit salvation because they are spiritually dead. 

The only thing man can contribute to God’s salvation program is a stinking, dead corpse, dead in the soul and corrupt in the body.  Man needs a Saviour and God is the Saviour.  Man could only come to God, crying to Him for mercy and waiting upon Him to act if it was His good pleasure to do so.  That is the Gospel of grace that the seed are counted for in Christ.  That is the Gospel of grace and promise.  That is the true Gospel of the Bible.  It is not one in which man can perform any kind of work, as it says in Ephesians 5:5-6:

For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

There is no inheritance – there is nothing.  They get nothing.  If only that had been stressed down through time and over the many centuries of the church age.  If only the pastors had consistently taught their congregations not to add any works to God’s grace.  Salvation is all of God.  It is all His doing.  It is the faith of Christ, not a man’s faith.  But they did not understand because most of them were natural-minded and the only relationship they had with God was through the covenant of works by the keeping the Law of the command to believe.  They taught what they knew, which was an earthly, carnal and natural-minded gospel.  So, the churches filled with men and women of a similar mind; that is, they had a mind that had not been changed and they had hearts that had not been transplanted.  There had been no salvation for so many that filled the pews of the churches for centuries.  The majority were always tares.  The Bible tells us that while men slept the enemy sowed tares among the wheat.  Satan was very active in the churches throughout the entire history of the church age, but especially toward its end, the time when God would make known who would get His inheritance and who would get nothing.  That is where we are right now.

Also, in the New Testament we read of Abraham in Romans 4:13:

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

We could read this to say, “the righteousness of Christ.”  It says in Romans 5:18-19:

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

This is what God is referring to in Romans 4:13.   It is Christ.  I will read it, again, in Romans 4:13:

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world…

I thought that Abraham was to inherit the land of Canaan for an everlasting habitation.  You see, this is a proof verse that when God made that promise in Genesis 17 He had in view the “world,” meaning the “new earth.”  Again, it says in Romans 4:13-14:

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

Again, for those that are attempting to find blessings of the promises of God through their ability to do the Law of God, it just cannot work.  It makes faith void.  In other words, the true Gospel would be of no effect.  It would be unprofitable.  Of course, God has one “way, truth and life.”  He has one Gospel and one way of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.  There are not two ways or five ways or 100 ways, but one.  The inheritance cannot come through the Law, and this is the reason Hagar was driven into the wilderness.  It is why her son that was born of her was out in the wilderness.  It is why she had lost all hope, as it says in Genesis 21:15-16:

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.

Hagar, who represents mount Sinai or the Law, and her child, who represents all children born of the Law, only have a relationship to God through their efforts in keeping His Law.  All hope is gone.  Finally, all hope is gone, and Hagar is realizing that her child will die: “Let me not see the death of the child.”

You see, this is very significant.  As I mentioned before, those that would be under the Law and seeking to get right with God through the Law will never give that up.  They will never admit there is no way to gain entry into heaven by those means, and they will die in that condition.

But what is happening here?  What is taking place?  God in His mercy had produced this historical situation where Hagar and her son would come to the realization that they are going to die. 

Lord willing, when we get together in our next study, we will try to see what is going on.  This is complex, because God, on one hand, has set up the whole situation regarding who Hagar represents and who Ishmael represents.  But, on the other hand, there was a promise given to Abraham concerning Ishmael.  God said He had heard Abraham regarding his son Ishmael and He would make a great nation of him.  And that will come back into view in this passage.