Genesis 21:10-21 KJV
10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.
11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.
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.
13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.
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.
15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.
16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow shot: 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.
17 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.
18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.
19 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.
20 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.
Welcome to KJV Cafe. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen. Each episode of the Cafe is dedicated to studying the Bible verse by verse from Genesis through Revelation. Your host here at the Cafe is Bible teacher, Clark Covington. Looks like the coffee is hot and ready, so let's get started. Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the Cafe. You heard the music. We are back in action. Amen. No longer recording from the phone. We are now back here in my home office, so I praise God for that. And welcome to the Cafe. Amen. I have the blackest decaf coffee you've ever tried, or you would ever try, in my possession. Espresso blend from a boxcar roasters, which is in some Lowe's food store, not all, but some. And it is a very dark decaf, and I like a medium roast, but for decaf, I enjoy it dark. So, amen. Cannot complain. I'm still catching up on the news and everything of the storm. We were out of pocket, out of power, and out of pocket for several days. But yeah, be praying for everybody that has been affected by the storm. Amen. Yeah, there's just, it's time to come to God. That's all I can say. When you read the stories of the suffering and the death of the people being stranded, it is definitely time to come to God, because tomorrow is not promised. And there's just a lot of harrowing stories out there. There's a lot of people doing good, taking up collections and so forth. I'm sure you've seen some pray for them, give as you can, and yeah, it's just stunning. They say the power company said, my wife said the power company said, so it's what here say, I guess, but close enough to the truth, that this is the worst outage they've ever had in their history. So, it is hopefully once in a lifetime storm not to come back, but we are thankful we're back on air, and we are looking here, not that we went off air, by the way. We're still, I don't think we missed any, but who, Lord knows, we are still here in Genesis, Genesis 21, and Genesis 20 has that whole situation with albimalec, the king of Garar, and Abraham has to tell a lie again. And then Abimalec is cursed for taking Sarah, and then Abimalec reprimands really both Abraham and Sarah. And God tells Abimalec, you need to have Abraham pray for you in order for you to be restored, and for your kingdom to be restored, because he had taken away the ability for his wives, right, plural, to give birth, to conceive. Among them sure other things, and so Abraham prays for Bimalec, Bimalec gives him gifts, this is in Garar, that's 20, not the finest time in Abraham's life for sure. And then coming into 21, we see the birth of Isaac, which would probably be the finest time in his life, you know, if you ask a dad what was their best day of their lives, and certainly is when their kids were born, right? And this is the first child born by Sarah, because Abraham had a child with Hagar ishmael, that was Sarah's idea, right? But the first promised child, the only promised child, the promised child Isaac arrives, amen? And so we see that at the beginning of Genesis 21, and then we move along, there's really three parts to Genesis 21, the birth of Isaac, the expelling of Ishmael, right? And then this peace treaty or covenant with a Bimalec king of Garar. And again, that word is used as a title, just like Pharaoh, would be a king in Egypt throughout different times and different pharaohs, right? Bimalec is often used in the Philistine culture and language as king, right? So we know that pretty sure, that sounds confident, doesn't, that some of the kings mentioned in Scripture, like when Isaac encounters a Bimalec, wouldn't be the same one, right? But this one is right after Genesis 20, and so I think it'd be fair to at least assume that a Bimalec is the same king that shows up in 21 that showed up in 20, and my research just briefly looking into that seems to validate that idea. So same a Bimalec, but for now, we're in that second part of the three parts of Genesis 21 in terms of like the structure or themes of it, and we're looking at this idea of Sarah telling the bond woman and her son to get out to go. And so we're going to dive a little deeper into that we get back to this break, so stay tuned. You're listening to KJV Cafe, we encourage you to look us up on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to her channel on YouTube. Now let's get back to some more in-depth Bible study. All right, so in this section, and we have, you know, it's kind of a broad section, Genesis 21, 10 through 21. So, so, and you know what, I'll do nine, because that's when it kind of starts. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born into Abraham mocking. Okay, so we talked about that last episode, get a little bit deeper into that in a minute, and then we'll just read a few verses after this. Okay, wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast out this bond woman and her son. For the son of this bond woman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. So you see there's confidence in Sarah's voice, and there is authority in her voice. She's referring to Hagar as the bond woman, not as the mother of Abraham's firstborn child, if you will. You see verse 11, and the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. And so we look at this idea, right, because, again, the last episode, I mentioned the idea of like step parents, right? And you've, if you have a biological parent and a step parent, and we've done foster care training a number of times, we did it, and then my wife got pregnant. And then we went back, we were working with an orphanage for our church, and so we went back and did the training again. And they refer to the mom as the bio mom, right, or the bio dad. You know, and then if you have a step parent, right, where there's not that biological relation, often times there's like a difference in the way that the parent relates to the child, right? And you've, I've heard this. So I grew up in a completely broken household, pretty much everybody in my family that I knew was divorced. My mom, obviously, then my dad would have been, so my mom and my dad, my dad several times, my uncle, who was kind of the man around since my dad left when I was young, my grandma, which was like unheard of at that time. I mean, she was born, I think, in 1901. And so she was divorced. Everybody's divorced, okay? So there was step parents here and there. And it's just never the same. You see it growing up, you know, I was a party to two different step moms over my upbringing. I think it was, plus some girlfriends that could have fit the role in terms of, you know, my dad in between his marriages. My mom never remarried, and I can't even imagine if she had, I would have felt bad for that guy. Lord, my grandma never remarried, but I see you see it, right? There's this difference here. And so Abraham is grieved, and Sarah says go, right? So Sarah's kind of like cold-blooded. My child is being mocked, and this is not happening, and Abraham is grieved, you know. He loves his son. You know, this is, again, a precious child to him, you know, and she's just saying go. And so what we see here is that oftentimes God will call us or allow us to go through hardships emotionally that are best for all involved. Verse 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 has said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." You see here, God is allowing Abraham to understand that even though he is the bio-dad, right, this is his child, let me look at Sarah and say, look, I understand you've had problems over the years, and this isn't technically your son even though it was your idea. But I love him, you know, I care for him. And God is saying, yes, but, okay. And now look at it from God's perspective. From God's perspective, he has the chosen line, which eventually will lead to his beloved Jesus who dies in the cross for our sins. And the chosen line cannot be disrupted or manipulated or dealt with harshly in any way that God wouldn't have it to be, right? And so if you have one that's seen mocking, right, and you have the chosen child now, that situation takes precedent because it's not just about Abraham's feelings, right? It is about what God is going to do with and through Isaac, right? And so we see that it had to be this way. And oftentimes when we look at our lives and we see maybe the Lord separating a child from a parent, which by the way, he does it all the time. There was a speaker the other day at an event that spoke simply of being separated from his, I think he said his father, I don't know if he said his family, but he definitely his father disowned him for becoming a Christian, a born-again believer. And he said that that was the price that he had to pay and he was comfortable paying that price because Christ paid the ultimate price on the cross of Calvary and God was calling him to depend on God and not on family and to trust God and not family. If God was going to use him, he would have to be separated from this influence. You see it throughout Scripture. Matter of fact, Abraham, if you think about it, he was called to leave his dad. And so I think that was in Heran, right? Abraham leaves his dad in Heran and some people want to come up with this idea that he waited until his dad died, but I don't know that that's the case. I mean, you know, when we looked at this, this is Genesis 12, right? And so, you know, when we looked at this, it looked like he was called to leave his dad while his dad was alive. And at that time, I don't think families did that. Genesis 12, verse 1, "Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, get the out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee." So God is saying, number one, get away from your family and from your father's house and go to a land I'll show you, and then here is the fruit of that. Verse 2 of Genesis 12, "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and I will make thy name great, and now shall be a blessing." Wow, so God is going to bless him for taking the step of faith of moving away from his earthly father and depending on his heavenly father. And now we just move the peg down one generation, and Abraham is being called kind of to the inverse, to send his son away, right? Instead of him being the son going away from his dad, now he's got to send his son away from the family. And God's, you know, he's saying, God, okay, Sarah, she's had some ideas here, they haven't always been what you wanted. And God immediately says, and I'm paraphrasing, I'm just thinking of what he would say, okay. It just says in verse 11 of Genesis 21, and the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son, and I gave that context, right? Biodad loves his son, has that closeness with him. Verse 12, "And God sent unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman, and all that Sarah sent unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." Verse 13, "And also of the son of the bondwoman, will I make a nation, because he is thy seed." You see, God is not, this is, by the way, this is who God is, he's love, okay? He loves Abraham so much, he says, listen to her, I'm giving you clear direction. God's in the details, right? And secondly, don't worry, he's going to be a great nation because he's yours. Now that's God's love. God's saying, just be obedient, I have a good plan, right? And we read about Ishmael, he's a fascinating character. He's a wild one, you know? He can't be pinned down. He's at battle here, there and everywhere. He's a mighty man, all these things. He did well for himself, amen? Many kings came out of him, right? So God blessed him. And see, again, that is the mystery of God. Like, God blessed the individual that wasn't the chosen one, that those people may end up opposing him, you know? And his ways, but God said, Abraham, I love you, he's your seed, I'll take care of him. And so Abraham's face with a choice, do I trust God? Or do I just want to go with my emotions? Or what my intellect says? Or try to manipulate something? And Abraham trusts God, as we go deeper in that passage, he basically packs their stuff and says, okay, get going. Trust God, and we should trust God too, oh, how blessings are just around the corner, as we trust him even in difficult times, as these certainly are. I thank you for listening, we'll get deeper into this passage of Scripture next time. Take care, God bless, and amen. Thanks for spending time with us today at the Cafe. We would love to hear from you. You can email Brother Clark directly at Clark@EnduringPromise.org. See you again tomorrow, same time, same place. [BLANK_AUDIO]
