Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #22 of Genesis, chapter 21.  I am going to read Genesis 21:14-19:

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. And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.

We are going slowly through this chapter, like we did the chapters before it, and we have come to this interesting passage.  I think this is the way we can summarize it on the spiritual level to see what emphasis God is making here.  It has to do with the two covenants, and not so much with the people themselves.  We think in terms of the two women, Sarah and Hagar, and their two children, Isaac and Ishmael.  We may also think of who they represent, like the elect children of God and the non-elect that were in the congregations.  However, I think we can also see that at the time of the end, God is making something known that had not been understood clearly throughout the history of the church age, and it was certainly not understood in the nation of Israel.  This means it had not been understood in all the history of the world until the time of the end.  And what has been made clear is the true and faithful Gospel program of salvation or God’s methodology in saving a people for Himself.

Hagar is a figurehead of mount Sinai and she was driven out with her child Ishmael, which proves that the covenant of works is a failure.  It will not accomplish the thing that people are told it will do.  It is a false covenant or a false gospel.  None can enter heaven through it.  None can inherit the kingdom of God because it would make void “faith” if God were to grant inheritance in any way through the Law.  And, yet, this truth was never completely understood throughout the history of the church or the history of Israel.  But at the time of the end, God would make it abundantly clear as He showed this truth by opening up His Word that had been sealed until the time of the end.

One of the first doctrines that came forth from the Word of God during the Great Tribulation period was the teaching that we are saved through the faith of Christ, and not by our own faith.  It is stated directly in Galatians 2 and in some other places.  It says in Galatians 2:16:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

No flesh is justified by the works of the Law.  None can receive the inheritance.  It is expressing an identical truth.

You know, the King James Bible has been around for over 400 years.  The Lord allowed the King James translators to properly translate the “genitive case,” which is the case of possession.  Therefore, it was rightly translated as “the faith of Christ,” or the faith belonging to Him.  It is not faith in Him that justifies a man, but it is the faith of Him; that is, it is His faith and not man’s faith.

According to John 1:13, we are not born by the will of man or by the flesh.  We are born of God.  It is His action.  It is His work of salvation that was performed on behalf of certain sinners He had chosen to save.  Nothing that they did, could do, or ever would do, saved them.  It was all done by Christ.  Of course, in His wisdom, God hid the information that Christ had offered up Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God at the foundation of the world.  What does that tell us?  What part could man play in salvation if God selected everyone to be saved before the foundation and Christ died for the sins of those people and rose again at the foundation of the world?  What part could man play when the world and mankind did not exist when this took place?  What could man contribute?  What work could man offer?  The answer is, “None,” because God never designed His salvation plan from the perspective of man’s works, but He was always looking to the work of Christ, as it says in Hebrews 4:3:

For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

We enter into rest because the works were finished before man was created and before he knew he was a sinner in need of salvation.  The works were finished by the Lord Jesus Christ, accomplished at the foundation of the world.  Notice how God joined that idea with “rest,” pointing to Sabbath rest.  That is the reason He worked six days in creation, and the seventh day He rested.  It was not because He was tired – God never gets tired.  He could have created a billion more creations.  There is no limitation to the power and might of Almighty God and, yet, He worked six days and rested on the seventh day to indicate that man must “enter into rest” through His completed work at the foundation of the world when Christ gave Himself as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.  And man must “rest” in that work, just like God rested from His work of creation on the seventh day.  Right from the beginning, during the first week of creation, God rested on the seventh day and He set in motion the weekly cycle we still observe today.  How many days are there in a week?  There are seven.  Of course, we observe a different Sabbath Day today because it was changed from Saturday to Sunday at the cross in 33 A.D.    But from creation until the cross, which was over 11,000 years of history, that weekly cycle was in effect, teaching “rest,” over and over.  There is a necessity to rest.  Work six days.  Rest on the Sabbath Day.  Enter into His rest. 

Yes - it was a Law that God gave to Israel and they observed it to varying degrees, but that Law was given to teach a deeper spiritual reality of “resting” in the finished work of salvation done by the Lord Jesus Christ.  He did all the work, just like God did all the work in creation.  We contribute nothing.  If God has had mercy upon us and He brings us under the hearing of the Bible that speaks of these things, we had better not try to add to that grace by trying to add our works to what Christ has done.  If we do so, we pollute the Sabbath.  We would violate the Sabbath’s spiritual Law, and not so much the “outward” Law, although that was also in view.  And God upheld that outward Law in the wilderness when the man picked up a few sticks on the Sabbath.  Moses asked God what they should do, and God told him the man must be stoned to death.  However, God commanded the man be stoned to death to teach and uphold the underlying spiritual principal, which was that man was not to add even the slightest bit of man’s work to the grace of God, polluting the fact that Christ had done all the work of salvation.  That person is to die.  That person is to be destroyed and God is indicating that the person is not saved through any effort or work of man and, therefore, he must be stoned to death, spiritually.  That is what God has highlighted and brought to light in an unparalleled way at the time of the end when He opened His Word to reveal a seemingly simple verse in Galatians 2:16 where it says we are saved by the faith of Christ, not by our own faith. 

God also opened the spiritual eyes of Mr. Camping and gave him a worldwide platform to declare these things to a radio and internet audience at a time when the world’s population had mushroomed and greatly increased, and at a time when the church age had come to an end.  God had visited them for their evil works and ended the church age.  But one of the first things that God did was to reveal the purest form of the Gospel of grace, which He used to save the great multitude outside of the churches and congregations.  Therefore, it was necessary to open up that understanding in a way that had never been previously understood.  The churches had always “danced around” it; they had bits and pieces of it, perhaps, but they never the fulness of the true Gospel of grace.  Finally, the pure declaration of salvation went forth and it was presented in a glorious way.  This was because of what God had said in 2Chronicles 36, a chapter describing the judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem by the Babylonians which identifies with the time of the end, the Great Tribulation and the loosing of Satan.  The unsealing of the Word of God occurred at that time and, of course, there is spiritual meaning for the end time in these verses.   It says in 2Chronicles 36:19:

And they burnt the house of God…

This refers to judgment that would come upon the New Testament churches.  God ended the church age.

Then it says in 2Chronicles 36:19:

…and brake down the wall of Jerusalem…

This means there was no more salvation within the churches and congregations, because the “wall” represents salvation.

Then it says in 2Chronicles 39:19-21:

…and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: To fulfil the word of JEHOVAH by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.

She “kept sabbath” refers to “rest.”  The “threescore and ten years” is seventy years, which represents the entire Great Tribulation period.  It was during the second part of that Great Tribulation that God sent forth the Latter Rain with a purified form of the Gospel.  It was sent forth outside of the churches and congregations to save the last of those people whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  This was the great multitude.  God completed His salvation program and there was an observance of sabbath rest because the Gospel was not being polluted.  No “works” of any kind were added to the Gospel message that was sent forth to all the world. 

As I have said, this is a glorious and wonderful thing that God did in saving all those people as He clarified the true Gospel, which was pure and without the works of man.  What about everything else?  It was polluted.  This is the reason Hagar was driven out because her covenant no longer had any relationship to the kingdom of God.  God ended His association with the churches where the Law (as identified with Hagar) operated and those under that covenant had flourished, seemingly, but God drove them out of His kingdom as He identified with one Gospel: “In that day there shall be one LORD,” or one JEHOVAH that is sent forth to all the inhabitants of the earth.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will continue to look at these very interesting things that God has hidden in His Word.