Tickled By The Promises Of God - Genesis 21:1-21 Series

If you’re a parent, you understand this. Right? You go and you say, “Finally he’s out of diapers. No more Pampers in the house.” “Oh this is great. Finally he’s weaned.” “Finally he’s sleeping through the night. Oh this is so cool.” Or “finally he’s off to school during the day.” Or “finally she’s starting to read.” You know when a child learns how to read they take off with reading and it’s just great because now you don’t have to read the instructions for history anymore. Just read them yourself! So now the child can read. It’s so fun. And then you say, “He can finally drive. He can drive himself all over the place. I don’t have to be taking him to here and there and wherever else.” Or “finally she’s moved out of the house.” Those are landmarks for parents, I’ve got to tell you. As parents we celebrate those moments.

So that’s what Abraham is doing. He’s saying let’s have a party. This baby is weaned. I’m so excited about this party. He invites everybody over. It kind of reminds me of a birthday party for a one-year-old. It's certainly not for the one-year-old. The only thing the one-year-old gets is a huge cake in front of him and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he makes a mess out of it. But this one of those big parties and everybody’s coming out, everybody’s around, and they’re celebrating the fact this child is weaned. So imagine the party. The party environment that’s going on.

But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing.

Okay, if you remember the story then you’ll remember that Abraham and Sarah conspired together when they found out they were going to have this baby when they were old. They said, “You know what? We’re going to help God out,” and so Sarah gave Hagar, an Egyptian servant woman, to Abraham as a wife so they could have a baby. They figured this is how God’s promise is going to take place. We’ll help God out. It was a human solution for a divine promise. This wasn’t God’s plan.

But now we have this boy named Ishmael. He’s about seventeen years old now. And what is he doing in the story here? He’s laughing. This is like a laugh of a persecuting kind of laugh. This is laugh that’s a teasing kind of laugh or a mockery. Now remember there’s a boy who’s three and a seventeen-year-old. Can a seventeen-year-old mock a three-year-old? Well if you have children, you know that that’s definitely possible. That the mockery can take place and the teasing can take place. Sarah sees this and the whole problem now raises its head. We’ve got this fleshly solution and we’ve got the son of the promise. So Sarah is going to take some action.

She says to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” That’s what she says to Abraham. Notice Abraham’s response. We’re looking at it from Abraham’s viewpoint at the party. Okay? It says – And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. In other words, he’d invested in this boy. He loved him. This is painful for Sarah to come and say put her away. I’m thinking in my own mind this is kind of unfair. That’s what I’m thinking in my own heart. But God has something planned here because God’s going to affirm Sarah. He’s not going to rebuke Sarah. Notice what God does in the passage. Abraham’s there, he really loves this boy and God’s saying no, we’re going to move this boy out of the situation. Why? Well we’ll come back to that in a minute.