God's Faithfulness in Times of Desperation: The Story of Hagar

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome back

to the Bible Guys. We are excited because today's Friday, and everybody loves

Fridays. Friday, Friday unless somebody's listening like on Saturday. Oh, well,

you know, Tuesday, but don't. Most people listen to the podcast

in real time. There's a lot of people that are catching up, are

there. They found out that we've got like a good jillion episodes, and

so they are going back and catching up too. Listen to another day.

Well, if you like catch up, there you go. But I would

say the majority of our people are waiting with baited breath for it to be

released at six o'clock in the morning. Yes, and by the way,

we are baited breath. We are not going to do what made Chris mad

today. It's we're taking a break from that we did last week. I

know, which is what makes Jeff Matt this week is that we're not here,

is that we're not doing what we made Chris Man this week? Yeah.

Yeah, But instead, why don't you read the instructions on the side.

Yeah. So the instructions for this one are, let me pull it

up here, this is how well do you know them? So in today's

passage, we're talking about the birth of Isaac and Hagar and Ishmael and all

these things, and so I'm going to have to also try to figure out

my friendship and relationship with you. Yeah, that's it. So how much

do you know about me? Chris is going to ask me three to five

questions about himself, and I'm going to have to see if I can answer

any of them if I really know you. So I have put together some

softballs here where I think I'm gonna start off with an easy give me a

yes, give me an actually, how many? How many? How many

questions are we can get? I have five, okay, this first one,

and these are worth two hundred and fifty thousand points apiece. No,

no, no, actually they're worth one point a piece. One point okay,

which is even worse. That's hardcore. I know, that's worse.

It's hard to make it up. So this is sort of a two parter.

The first one should be easy, what is my favorite dessert? Kind

of dessert, your favorite just category of dessert? Ice cream? Yeah,

the ice cream. That's that's not the full question. The full question is

because I knew you knew that. What is my favorite flavor of ice cream?

Yes, it's an old man flavor. It's a is it maple nut?

No? Is it? It's one of those though it's you are correct,

it's an old man flavor. Yes, it's not butterscotch. It's what

you just said. I know, butter pecan. Yes, I knew I

was getting there. Yes, so I started with the nut right, right

right, and then got to the butter and then but okay, here's another

one that you might know. How many hold ones? Do I have two?

That's correct, Yes, I have two, old one. I remember

that. Okay. Now here's a little harder one. Okay, I think

I've told you the story, maybe only once or twice. What city did

I get engaged to my wife at? Pittsburgh? Yes, yes, okay,

I knew that one. Yeah. I think I've only ever heard that

story one time. Did you struck me as funny that I'm gonna take my

wife to fan Because I didn't say I took my wife to Olive Garden to

get engaged, So Fancy's place. I knew so for a boy from Youngstown,

the fancy place was Pittsburgh. That's right back in the in the nineties,

early nineties, yes, early nineties, before the city turned around,

which is like a rusty steel city. It's exactly right. But did you

go to a pretty place, like a pretty park? Yes, ye,

yes, of course, where the water meets and all that. Yeah,

all that, yep, ye, right off the right, off the three

rivers, the whole thing. Okay. So okay, now this one here

is I'm not sure I've ever told you this number, but we've heard on

the Bible. Guys, how many sets of stitches you've had in your lifetime?

Yes? How many sets of stitches have I had? Oh? Boy?

None? Two? Two? Okay, one on my chin when I

fell off my bike when I was six, and then one also on my

chin when a dog bit me and I had to go get some stitches up.

Okay, I knew that story. Yeah, I knew that story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that's it. Just too I feel

like I failed you, Chris. And how many how many of you had?

I've had stitches twenty one times? Twenty one times? Right, so

big difference between the two. But I haven't had any stitches in like ten

years. This was the last one I had. Okay, all right,

now this one's actually a hard one. So these are getting progressively harder.

Right, So you know all of the Marvel movies, right, I'm not

I'm not including I'm not including after Endgame, Okay, okay, So all

the way from Captain America, so in that in that stream story, which

is called Phase one, yes, phase one, Okay, So in Phase

one in Captain America, all the way through Endgame, which is my absolute

favorite Marvel movie. Oh my goodness, this is a tough one. It

is a tough one. It wins over all the other Marvel movies, all

the other Marvel movies. I'm going to say, what's the Scarlet Johansson movie?

What is that? Black Widow? Black Widow? That's what I'm gonna

say. Not even close, No, not even close. That's my wife's.

Is that your wife's favorite? Maybe that's I remember it coming up at

dinner one time. That's my wife's. And here's the reason why my wife

actually appreciates the heroes that don't actually have the powers, right, she's more

impressed. That's the that's the conversation I'm remembering. Yes, yes, I

no power. Okay, So, but I forgot because because oppos between Batman

and Superman. You love Superman because of the superpowers, that's right, and

you don't like Batman because it's just a rich guy with gadgets. I should

have known that, So can I can I hit reset on that one,

which, by the way, let's be clear, I don't mind Batman,

it's just that you're a Batman hater. Stopped. But they don't get to

go backwards on this one. Yeah, they make him out to be more

than he is capable of doing. He's capable of every bit of that,

and no, no he's not. Okay, okay, No, then I

don't know, I don't know. Pick the most outlandish, over the top

movie of all of them, Endgame, Close, Infinity Wars, Infinity Wars.

Okay, yeah it is. It is because I think that in our

lifetime, and perhaps maybe the lifetime of every listener, regardless of how young

they are, they will never ever probably see another film company accomplished what Marvel

accomplished, which was to do ten years of incredible movies and then make one

make one movie with all of those stars in one movie. Yes, and

not only that, but to actually put ten years of movies and somehow make

it one story. They tied it together with Infinity Stones. Right. Well,

the reason why it was so difficult for me is I couldn't think.

I don't think zach Efron's in g was just is in the Marvel universe.

That's what I was trying to figure out. Sorry about that Endgame or excuse

me? And between the two, between the two, Endgame was slightly the

better movie, and or excuse me, in Findity words were slightly the better

movie. And I would just say, I would just say it was so

amazing. I just I get superhero movie is amazing. More superheroes is more

amazing. All the super superheroes is most amazing. That's essentially your your philosophy

on this. That's a part of it, Yes, but it's the accomplishment.

It is. It is the it is the wonder of seeing the thirty

characters and you you know, the depth and the awesomeess of every single one.

I'm sorry I missed that one one epic epic moment. Yes, okay,

are you gonna let me redeem myself? Is there another one? No?

That's it. That's fine, it's it. That's all fine. But

you got three out of five? Okay, what was the other one I

missed? You missed? Uh? How many stitches do I have? Oh

yeah, that's I knew about the dog bite. I didn't know about the

bicycle thing. Yeah, okay, well there you go. I kind of

just know you a little bit. I've been vaguely paying attention. Mostly,

I'm only listening to figure out when you're done talking so I can tell you

a more amazing story. That's nothing. Let me tell you about this one.

Bridy Rian says. We just wait for the lips to stop bothing soon.

You say, you mean you see the difference. Yeah, So the

fact that I got any right, it's pretty amazing. That's really funny.

Okay, So yesterday we paused in our system or in our process here of

what we were going to cover. We were supposed to talk about this topic

yesterday, but instead we went and did the Sodom and Gomora thing. And

then today we're coming back and we're continuing on. In Genesis chapter twenty one,

we're going to talk about the birth of Isaac and how Hagar and Ishmael

leave. Yes, right, So here's what it says in verse when it

says, the Lord kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had

promised. That's one of my favorite phrases in the Bible. God keeps his

word and does what he promises. Right. She became pregnant, and she

gave birth to a son for Abraham and his old age. And this happened

at just the time God said it would, and Abraham named their son Isaac.

Eight days after Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded.

Abraham was one hundred years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah declared,

God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with

me. Who would have said that Abraham to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a

baby. Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age. And

then in verse eight, it says when Isaac grew up and was about to

be weaned, Abraham prepared a huge feast to celebrate the occasion. But Sarah

saw Ishmael, the son of Abraham, and her Egyptian servant Hagar, making

fun of her son Isaac. So she turned to Abraham and demanded get rid

of that slave woman, and her son. He is not going to share

the inheritance with my son Isaac. I won't have it. This upset Abraham

very much because Ishmael was his son. But God told Abraham, do not

be upset over the boy and your servant. Do whatever Sarah tells you,

for Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted. But I

will also make you a nation of descendants of Hagar's son, because he is

your son too. So Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food

and the container of water, and strapped them on Hagar's shoulders. And then

he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness

of Yoursheba. When the water was gone, she put the boy in the

shade of a bush, and then she went and sat down by herself,

about one hundred yards away. I don't want to watch the boy die,

she said. She burst into tears. But God heard the boy crying,

and the Angel of God called the Hagar from heaven, Hagar, what's wrong.

Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies

there. Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great

nation from his descendants. Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well

full of water. She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a

drink, And God was with the boy. As he grew up in the

wilderness. He became a skillful archer, and he settled in the wilderness of

Paran. His mother arranged for him to marry a woman from the land of

Egypt, a man alive that one sinful time costs so much pain all these

years later, and you know, there's just there's so much in there,

the idea of I can't even imagine. I can't even fathom it. She's

wandering the it says, it's so plainly, and you've been in the wilderness

of be she but too, it's just so brutally difficult. It's like it's

like there's only like four sentences that summarize this unbelievable thing, and we could

just we can just breeze over it. Yeah, but do you can you

put yourself on a spot where you have to be you have to be so

convinced that you're gonna die. And by the way, if you're gonna so

convince you're gonna die, how dehydrated are you oh, if you set the

boy down and then walk an entire football field away and say, I just

don't want to see him or hear him. I know he's going to die.

I just can't bear myself to be there when he does. That means

that you are on the brink of death. And so she's wandering in the

wilderness, runs out of water, and then I'm telling you it is just

it's this thing where my brain, I just got to be very honest and

transparent. My brain goes toward, why God would you allow that to happen?

When God, you're the one that said to Abraham, hey, don't

be afraid, listen to whatever Sarah tells you to do. And so then

what they did is loaded They loaded them up with food and water. They

send them off, and so you know, Hagarth is thinking to herself like,

okay, you know God, God said this is okay. God also

said that I'm going to be, you know, the mother of a great

nation and great descendants through my son. And the next thing, you know,

she's absolutely convinced that she's going to die. And I'm thinking to myself

like, why why would that even be necessary? Right, And to be

honest, with you. Sometimes it makes me angry, makes me angry that

she has to even go through that, like, why would that even be

necessary? Right? And there's a part of me that thinks that God,

somehow, you know, he allowed certain things to happen. We know this

for a fact. He allows certain things to happen because it's a foreshadowing of

Jesus coming. He allows things to happen, you know, the story of

Joseph, the story of Melkezedek. You know, even job in some ways

was to serve as an example for all of us, right, And I

think that sometimes the Old Testament stories play out the story of Jonah and the

whale, right, you know, and so Jesus uses it as an example

for his purposes of his death, barrel and resurrection. So these stories happen,

these hardships happen. But there's a part of me that thinks, these

poor people, you know, they're going through, you know, all of

these different things, and I mean even the delivery of the Ten Commandments,

right, the plagues, the passover, right, all of it pointing to

Jesus. And we understand the significance of it. It's wonderful, it's great,

But my heart goes my heart goes out the Haggarder and her son,

man, it really does. Yeah. So one, we live in these

modern times in the West, we live with such abundance and comfort that we

forget how brutally difficult life has been for the thousands of years humanity has been,

you know, on the Earth for one and currently for some people around

here. So this happens to be a story. All of that is.

You know, a couple weeks ago we talked about the curse on the planet.

Right. It wasn't supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be

enjoyable, right, right, And it was hard because life is really really

hard because of sin. Sin caused it. In this situation, she's banished

because of Abraham's sin with her and the jealousy now that that has created in

Abraham's marriage, and the fact that they were mocking the promised one of God,

Isaac who ultimately represents eventually Jesus, right, that's what he represents.

And so is that mocking I think is a bigger deal than the one sentence

covers in there. For one, the other part of it is there,

you know, I find myself sometimes getting angry at God's decisions either now in

my everyday life or you know, for instance, my wife, her best

friend several years ago, died of cancer, and I remember being so mad

because I didn't know a nicer person than Tracy. Honestly, she would pray

for you quickly. I mean, she was just so quick to say,

Hey, let's pray about that. She was in the word. She was

incredibly generous, She was selfless in serving others, Such a kind person.

Never if you wanted to say something bad about somebody, she would always find

a way to make something. I think she would say nice things about the

devil, right if you want to, she oh, I don't think he

really meant it. Right. She was just that person. And I was

when she was dying of cancer. I was so mad at God thinking,

you know, uh, jel Anne was my executive assistant and she cancer,

same person, such a wonderfully good person. I remember thinking, God,

I got a whole bunch of people that I could suggest, if you want

to take them out, take them out, not her. She's great,

right, And I remember it was during that time with well, when Tracy

was fighting cancer, I was mad at God that I literally you mentioned this

the other day that you kind of had this moment when God said I'm not

done with you. Yeah, I really had this strong impression that God literally,

in this phrase, won't go away from me. Is your morality superior

to mine? Right? Is my sense of goodness superior to because that's what

I was questioning. I was questioning, is my morality, my sense of

good superior to God's sense of good? And he has different plans than we

have, and he has different priorities than we have. So the curse is

water is hard to find. Life is extraordinarily difficult. It wasn't supposed to

be this way. Disease happens, the blessing, the mercy is here.

She is Hagar kind of has a habit of running away from problems. Right.

She ran away from Abraham before, and God met her and wouldn't let

her do it cent her back. This time, she runs away from her

dying son. God meets her there. You know, he keeps meeting her.

She's causing some of her own troubles, but God keeps meeting her there.

So in both of these things, which is more extraordinary? Which would

you want to live your entire life in ease and never have an encounter with

God, or would you want to have two encounters with God in your lifetime?

Yeah, well the God the God choice. Yeah, yeah, I

mean that's that's the right Sunday School answer. But I think about that that

Hagar has had two more physical personal encounters with God than I have. M

Yeah, right, yeah, it's it's it's it's such a desperate moment,

you know, and then all of a sudden, it says God opened her

eyes and she saw well. I also tried to interpret how what does that

mean? Does that mean that she perhaps didn't see a well and it was

there the whole time, or did God perhaps do the you know, supernatural

realm. Well, you know, I think I think it was supernatural.

She bay that region has a lot of wells. That's probably why Abraham settled

there and Isaac stayed there in that area. There's a lot of wells there.

But I I don't think it. It doesn't say she missed a well,

right right, It was that God let her suddenly. I think it

was a miracle. God met her when she was running from her problems,

not able to face the difficulties. God shows up in the middle of that

brokenness and says, here, let me, let me take care of you.

Yeah, only that he promises to bless her son. And here the

whole world still, you know, the Ishmaelites still have impact on the planet.

So we spent all of our time reacting to Hagar and Ishmael. But

let's not overlook the fact that Isaac is finally born. Well that's the whole

point of his passage, right right, So we're broken harder for Hagar here,

but yeah, the whole point of the passage is God followed through on

his promises. Yeah, and you said at the beginning, you said,

one of your favorite phrases of the Bible. The Lord kept his word and

did it for Sarah exactly what he had promised. Yeah, So it is

a great Yeah, it's a great observation right there. That's a strong sentence,

and it's it's so weird. So so Ishmael is thirteen years old.

This is thirteen years after Ishmael was born, and so you have this young

teenage boy and then now you have this brand new baby, and Abraham's one

hundred years old, Sarah is ninety years old. And so Sarah just thinks

it's funny. So she laughs in derision. You know a couple of times

when the Bible says, hey, you know, when the angel said,

hey, you're going to have a baby, she said right, and they'd

say, hey, why is it Sarah? Oh? I didn't laugh,

right, but she was. She was laughing. She thought it was silly.

It was. It was an absurd an absurdity that was almost incomprehensible.

And one year later now she's laughing, going, I just can't believe God

did this. Right, the joy going from being dismissive and derisive to just

pure joy and not onely that but like any woman who would hear that she

had a baby at ninety would laugh, right, they'd be like that is

crazy, but laugh with a joyful kind of boy, right, like that's

so sweet and I can't believe it? But wow, who would have ever

known? Yeah? You know, and we always think that too, you

know, whenever circumstances play out, you know, we can't see the future,

but we get there and we say, who would have ever thought?

You know, we have we have those kind of comments, you know,

and and you know what all of life is that way? But the but

the answer to that question is God would have God would have thought? God

would have God, you know, would have predicted it because God knows.

And so there's all these moments in our lives where we look back and we

see God's faithfulness, And wouldn't it be great to just know what God knows?

And and and if you know what God knows, that everything's going to

work out and God's going to be faithful, you know what, that's really

called trusting his promises. That's right, that's what that is. So if

we have the ability to look into the future and know what God knows and

everything's going to work out, it is literally the same as if just assuming

that God is going to work it out and that we're going to trust his

promises. That's really good. So my dad, so my mom and my

dad had two more sons, some Mark and I are five years apart.

And then when I was nineteen and again when I was twenty, my two

youngest brothers were born. I was in college. Wow. Right, And

so at my church, my pastor called my dad Abraham all the time.

He was like fifty two or something when the boys were born, Wow,

and he called him Abraham all the time. They tease him, but that's

half of Abraham's age, right, it's so bizarre. And that's why God

waited to that moment, is there's just no human way that this could have

been manufactured, right, It was only God's way. And by the way,

your dad's age when he had those kids is our age now, yeah

right when. By the way, the thought of Liz having a child and

myself having a child together, yeah, makes me want to take a nap

right now. Yeah? Yeah, My dad was very very young and virile

when he was our age, so my mom is substantially younger than my dad.

My mom was like fifteen years younger than my dad, So okay,

at least makes sense for her, right right. So well, hey,

it looks like that is our time. So so God keeps his promises.

And even when you're trying to run away from your promise or from your problems,

Good will meet you there. Yes, so we will see you next

time on the Bible, guys,