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Genesis 21:1-21
21:1 The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. 2 And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.1 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” 7 And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
8 And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 9 But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing.2 10 So she said 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.” 11 And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. 12 But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. 13 And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.” 14 So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
15 When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. 17 And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18 Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” 19 Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. 20 And God was with the boy, and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. 21 He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Genesis chapter 21. And I do want to encourage you to prayerfully consider those trips. It was, one of the most transformative things for my family and I as we got to go on that. Genesis 21, we're going to be looking at, 2 different women and different laughters that we find from these women as we look at the birth of Isaac. Beginning in verse 1, the Lord visited Sarah as he had said.
Jeffrey Heine:And the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, who Sarah whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when when he was 8 days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Jeffrey Heine:And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham and Sarah would nurse children, yet I have borne him a son in his old age? And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day, and Isaac was that Isaac was weaned.
Jeffrey Heine:But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. So she said to Abraham, cast out the slave woman with her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you.
Jeffrey Heine:For through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water and the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes.
Jeffrey Heine:Then she went and sat down opposite him in a good a good way off, about the distance of a bow shot. For she said, let me not look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy. And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what troubles you, Hagar?
Jeffrey Heine:Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Up. Lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
Jeffrey Heine:And God was with the boy, and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and he became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Peran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to God.
Jeffrey Heine:You would pray with me. Father, I ask that through your spirit, you would make this text clear to us, and you would write your truth on our hearts. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen. So about a month ago, I was emailing back and forth with my accountant. I I I was starting a a new nonprofit, and I needed her help on some things. And she was willing to do this for free. I'd never met this lady.
Jeffrey Heine:Her name's Jo, and, she's an older woman who just volunteered her time. And as we were emailing back and forth, finally realized we just need to talk on the phone. And so I said, let's just set up a time to talk. And then my phone rings. And I never answer my phone, I mean, as none of y'all do, because I know I've tried calling.
Jeffrey Heine:But, it it called there and it was a two zero five number, so I assumed it was her. And I answered the phone and I hear an older woman say, is this Joel Brooks? I said, it is. And I go, Joe, let's get this thing going. She goes, well, okay.
Jeffrey Heine:And then she starts talking to me and I realize, this isn't Jo the accountant. It was another Jo, another woman named Jo, who was an older woman there. Now I know 2 Joes. And she was calling because she wanted me to come visit a nursing home, Fair Haven on Montclair. And, she had got my name through various means.
Jeffrey Heine:She heard I might be interested in doing this. And so when she called me and it verified this is Joel, and I said, let's just do this thing, she was, like, alright. So I went there on a Tuesday, and, and I I spent the day at Fairhaven Retirement Community Nursing Home. And it was so much fun. I I I went room to room and I just got to meet with a bunch of older women.
Jeffrey Heine:They're all in their nineties, women who would outlive their husbands. And just take time. Read the scripture with them. Pray with them. Just swap stories.
Jeffrey Heine:It was a great time. It was also depressing. I won't lie to you. It's a pretty depressing place, especially those who have severe dementia, those who physically are really ill. And what what I found to be the most depressing thing was these were people who no longer had any potential.
Jeffrey Heine:And, I'm not easily depressed or discouraged and so I can, you know, play with kids in Haiti or I can be with people even as they have made terrible life decisions. And because their future's still in front of them, there's the potential for change. You have real hope, but I was meeting with people whose potential had come and gone. And I couldn't think of anything more discouraging. And while as I was meeting with them, it also hit me that these women were the age of Sarah, who we've been looking at.
Jeffrey Heine:And Sarah's potential had come and gone. She was at a point in her life where having a children, having a child, well, that option was gone a long time ago. Sarah, in this text, is 90 years old. About the same age as those women at the nursing home. Abraham, her husband.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean he's a 100. He's been drawing social security for 35 years. I mean he is old. And even though people, they lived longer than, they still are old. Sarah has already been described from 10 years earlier as having already gone through menopause.
Jeffrey Heine:Already at that point, being old and advanced in her years. But now, this one who we have seen who has no hope, who has no potential to have any children, she actually has a child 25 years after God promised it to her. 25 years after God said, you will have a child. Have you ever wondered why God made her wait so long? I mean, why why did God have 25 years of waiting?
Jeffrey Heine:Mean, you ever wonder what would have happened if he didn't do that? What if way back in chapter 12, 25 years earlier, when God had come to Abraham and Sarah and he said, Sarah's gonna have a child if boom, she got pregnant right then. What if the story if that's how this story had unfolded? I mean, there still would have been laughter. There still would have been rejoicing.
Jeffrey Heine:But it would have probably been something like this. I'm glad that Sarah finally got pregnant. We were beginning to worry. Isn't it great? I mean, it's great that we didn't think you'd have a child, but you did.
Jeffrey Heine:And there would be laughter and there would be rejoicing, but not because of anything necessarily miraculous happened, just something very, very late and perhaps unexpected. You would have had what we read here. I mean, verses 6 and 7, she bursts out in song. It's written in Hebrew poetry here, actually. When she reads or sings, God has made laughter for me.
Jeffrey Heine:Everyone who hears me will laugh over me. She is bursting, jubilant in song at what the Lord has brought in her life. And this theme of laughter here, really is the theme over the entire birth story of Isaac. Isaac's name, we looked at this a couple weeks ago, it actually means laughter, or it means he laughs. After he's born, we see Sarah breaking out into song, mentioning laughter.
Jeffrey Heine:But this isn't the only time we've seen laughing around his birth story. Several times, laughter has come up. And it's the author's way of saying, you wanna understand what's really happening with the story of Isaac, you need to understand the laughters. And what I want us to do is take a look at these different laughters we've seen so far. The first was back in chapter 17 when Abraham was a mere 99 years old.
Jeffrey Heine:And God had once again promised that he would have a child through Sarah. Abraham's response was this. It said he fell on his face and laughed. He fell on his face and laughed when God told him. He said, shall a man who's a 100 have a child?
Jeffrey Heine:We don't know what type of laughter that was. If it was a believing laughter, it was a doubt filled laughter, but we do know this, that literally Abraham collapses in laughter. And I think that's probably a fusion of a lot of things, but we certainly know that there was some doubt in this because the first thing Abraham says when he's done laughing is, God, you don't have to do this. You don't have to make these promises to me. I love Ishmael.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm good with Ishmael. Don't You don't have to do this. Almost is it like he's he's embarrassed that God would make such a promise. You don't have to do this because Ishmael is absolutely fine with me. Abraham responds with laughter.
Jeffrey Heine:Sarah later responds with laughter. We read this in chapter 18, a story we've been talking about several times in which, 3 angels come and they visit Sarah. Actually, they visit Abraham and they say your wife Sarah is gonna have a child this time next year. And Sarah's on the other side of the tent, but she's eavesdropping, she's listening and she laughs. And so the Lord says, why did Sarah laugh?
Jeffrey Heine:So she could hear it. She goes, but I didn't laugh. Oh yes, you did. Calls her out on it. Why did the Lord feel the need to call out Sarah on her laughter?
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, she wasn't even in the room. She's laughing quietly to herself. Why does the Lord go out of His way to call her out on it? Not once, but twice. I think He wants it on her permanent record, if you will.
Jeffrey Heine:No. No. No. No. We're writing this down.
Jeffrey Heine:You laughed. We all need to know Sarah laughed. Sarah needs to be reminded that this was her posture upon hearing the news was one of laughter. And this wasn't a laughter of of jubilation, a laughter of, I can't believe God is doing this amazing thing. This was a laughter of disbelief.
Jeffrey Heine:This was a laughter of somebody who's become scared to hope again. If you're ever around any teenagers, or if you can remember back to when you were a teenager, I would call this the laugh of a teenager, is what Sarah does here. You know how teenagers, they laugh at everything? A lot of times, it's this nervous laughter at everything. Because they don't wanna appear weak.
Jeffrey Heine:They don't wanna appear vulnerable. If you watch a scary movie with a teenager and the most terrifying scene, they'll break out laughing. And they'll say something about the cheesy special effects or something anything just to say, I'm not really scared. You know, I'm not scared. I'm not allowing myself to be scared in this moment.
Jeffrey Heine:I have seen a teenager, a teenage girl, when somebody came up to her and said, are those new shoes? She broke out laughing. She's like, yeah, they're new shoes. Basically meaning, am I allowed to say I really like them or not? Because they're that weak.
Jeffrey Heine:They they wanna know, do you like these shoes? Do you not like these shoes? Because I I don't wanna say I really liked them and bought them myself unless I hear some kind of affirmation from you. Teenagers walk that, you know, that they're not fully adults yet and they walk this insecure line. And often, there's that laughter there saying, I don't wanna put my heart out there.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't wanna even hope that you would compliment something. Sarah has this nervous kinda laughter. She doesn't wanna risk hoping. She's been burned in the past. She doesn't wanna be vulnerable.
Jeffrey Heine:She's trying to protect the fragility of her heart to keep it from completely breaking. Now maybe 24 years ago, she would not have laughed. Maybe 24 years ago, she would've just said, I'm gonna have a kid? Wonderful. Maybe that was her response.
Jeffrey Heine:But 24 years of nothing has hardened her. She's not gonna be so weak. She's not gonna be so gullible anymore. She laughs at God's promise because she's given up hope. Do any of you relate to Sarah in this?
Jeffrey Heine:Do you? I think there's a reason this story is recorded for us. Do you relate to her? And if you feel yourself, your heart becoming hardened over the years? I'm not asking if you're giving up faith or anything like that.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm not asking you, if you're not gonna still remain a faithful follower of God, still try to obey His commandments, still go to church, be a good moral person, that's not what I'm asking. But, have you felt yourself guarding your heart to actually hope that God might actually show up and do something miraculous in your life? That you just can't quite believe in a God who intervenes in your life. Do you believe in blessings in a general sense? You obey God and He blesses you.
Jeffrey Heine:But that God would actually enter into your life and do something new to you to bless you. That's just something you're not willing to give yourself up to believing anymore. Do you find yourself just kind of grinding it out in your Christianity? I mean, you're faithful. It's one step in front of the other.
Jeffrey Heine:You are faithful. You are grinding it out. And he had this kind of low grade joy. I mean, it's never over the top. It's never too bad, but it's this kind of low grade joy.
Jeffrey Heine:But you've given up hope that God would actually do something new to bring you indescribable joy. That's just a part of your life you've shut down. I think all of us have felt that at times. Some of us live right where Sarah is. Good, faithful people.
Jeffrey Heine:But, honestly, we've given up hope thinking God would ever do anything new in our lives. So the question is this. Why did God bring Sarah to such a place as this? I think the answer is that the Lord purposely waited so long, 24 years long, because He wanted Sarah to experience the darkness. And then He wanted to bring her through it.
Jeffrey Heine:He was working character in her. He's giving her a depth in her being. And those things can only be developed going through sufferings and trials, not through avoiding them. You show me a person who has never suffered and show me a person who's never had to wait for anything And I will show you a person who lacks any depth. These are things that you have to go through trials.
Jeffrey Heine:You have to go through suffering. You have to wait for these things to be worked in you by God. That's what God's doing here. Sarah's joy and her faith are all gonna be greater, having gone through this. The reason she's able to break forth into song is because of the 24 years of darkness, And that God shows up and does the miraculous.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's look at how the birth itself is described. This moment we've been waiting for. 1st, yeah. Verse 1. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
Jeffrey Heine:So once again right there, God keeps his word. And here, finally our birth story. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. That's it. After this long anticipated birth, one that we've been waiting for now for 10 whole chapters in Genesis.
Jeffrey Heine:We've been waiting for for 25 years. When we finally get here, all we get is this one short terse sentence, which proves 2 things. 1st, the guy writing this was a guy. Alright. He's This is a man writing down this description of the birth, because this is how men describe births.
Jeffrey Heine:All I have to do is I mean, I could pull up my phone and just show you the text from different fathers from the hospital after they have a child. And it's usually something like praise God we had a baby. Period. That's it. If they wanna add a detail, they might say praise God a baby boy.
Jeffrey Heine:And, and so, I I will tell Lauren these things. I'll be like, hey, so and so, they had a baby. She's like, Anne, that's just the introduction. Like, what else? Like, I don't know.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, height, weight? She goes, how about even a name? I was like, I don't know. And I don't think I have to care. If the father didn't care, I don't have to care.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? I'm off the hook on this one. So so Moses, not Miriam, wrote this. Moses wrote this. And so it's just it's very terse to the point.
Jeffrey Heine:But there's actually a theological reason for this. The theological reason is although everything else has been up and down in drama and in doubt, how Abraham will respond, how Sarah would respond, All these different people, like, being taken captive and then fighting and, angels, cities being destroyed. All of this stuff up up in the air. God's word never has been. This wasn't ever in doubt.
Jeffrey Heine:That's why it says God said it. He did it. There's drama all over here, but as far as God keeping His word, there's no drama. I mean, what? God does what He promises.
Jeffrey Heine:End of story. And so we know that we could count on God and His word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God remains forever. It's rock solid. So Isaac is born.
Jeffrey Heine:He's named Isaac. His name means laughter or he laughs. And then, Abraham circumcises him. It's the first baby that we have circumcision. We see circumcision in the Old Testament, because He is the child of promise.
Jeffrey Heine:And then we have Sarah bursting into song, bursting into laughter, completely overcome with joy. And this is where we wish the story ended, was with this laughter of Sarah. But actually, there is another laughter. This story takes a ugly turn with this other laughter. Verse 8.
Jeffrey Heine:And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. So she said to Abraham, cast out the slave woman with her son. For the son of the slave woman shall not be an heir with my son, Isaac.
Jeffrey Heine:Okay. So Isaac, when he's weaned, he's likely 2, 3 years old at this point, which would make Ishmael 16 years old. Sarah catches a glimpse of them playing. Whatever. And, and Ishmael laughs at the toddler.
Jeffrey Heine:There's no huge crime that's being committed here. Anybody ever seen a teenager laugh at a toddler? Even if the teenager was making fun of the toddler for doing something. Is that a huge crime? No.
Jeffrey Heine:It's just common. Yet, Sarah's response is over the top. I mean, she goes ballistic when she sees this happening. She totally loses it. She runs to her husband.
Jeffrey Heine:She says, you need to kick Hagar and Ishmael out of here. She actually refuses to even use their names. She says, cast out the slave woman and her child. She is over the top in her reaction here. And what we see here is actually, unfortunately, going to become a pattern for the rest of Genesis.
Jeffrey Heine:We see it first here, and we're gonna see this story over and over and over. Parents are going to turn their children into idols. God's going to bless someone. Give them the gift of a child, and then instead of worshiping the giver, they're gonna turn around and begin to worship the gift. And they're gonna begin to wrap up all of their identity in the child that God gave them.
Jeffrey Heine:And if it's not a child, it's going to be a spouse that they'll wrap all of their identity in. So with very few exceptions, from this point on in Genesis, we're gonna see the patriarchs wrapping up their entire identity in somebody else and not in the Lord. It's gonna be so disheartening to see this time and time again. But parents, the truth is this. Some of us don't love our children.
Jeffrey Heine:We love ourselves through our children. And spouses, the the truth is this. Some of us, we don't love our spouse. We love ourselves through our spouse. We've turned them into idols.
Jeffrey Heine:We're trying to find our significance. We're trying to find our identity through another person. I have, numerous times, I've heard parents say something like this. You know, I finally found meaning in my life when I had my child. I finally found my purpose, my purpose when I became a dad or when I became a mom.
Jeffrey Heine:Any of you ever seen dads literally go ballistic at their children's ball games? So they're watching their children at bat and they're screaming. I mean, poor umpire. Then this poor child, they're screaming at their child. They're just going ballistic and you realize, woah.
Jeffrey Heine:This is not just a game. Like, and it's not. It's not a game. That dad is living life through his child. It's not whether his child gets a hit or not.
Jeffrey Heine:It's whether he gets the hit or not. All of his identity is wrapped up in there. He's not loving the child. He's loving himself through the child. We also do this with spouses.
Jeffrey Heine:We talk about romantic love this way. Our love songs are about how our lover saved us. Or a husband might tell his wife, you know, I found myself when I found you. But hear me. No spouse or no child was ever meant to carry that weight.
Jeffrey Heine:They can't do it. Only God can. If you place those expectations in a child or in anybody, they can't bear it and they will crumble, and you can't bear it and you will crumble. And unfortunately, we're gonna see that repeat itself over and over through Genesis. Sarah's over the top reaction here shows that she has turned Isaac into an idol.
Jeffrey Heine:And now when she tells Abraham to cast them out, Abraham is obviously disturbed. He's deeply disturbed because Abraham loves Ishmael. You you kinda gotta read between the lines in several of these texts here, but it actually seems like Abraham loves Ishmael a lot more than he loves Isaac. For one, when God said he was gonna give Sarah a child, Abraham said, you don't have to do that. I'm really good with Ishmael.
Jeffrey Heine:I love Ishmael. May Ishmael be the child of promise. May he live before you. God said, no. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this.
Jeffrey Heine:And then in the birth story, we see how God visited Sarah. God did to Sarah what he had promised. This was all about Sarah's dream here. I, you have Abraham seems to just really be attached. His hopes and dreams are in Ishmael.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he's deeply disturbed at what's happening. And God says, I want you to listen to your wife, and I want you to send them away. He goes, don't worry. I'm gonna take care of Hagar. I'm gonna take care of Ishmael and I'm going to bless them.
Jeffrey Heine:And so early in the morning, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness with essentially nothing more than some sandwiches and an algae bottle. That's essentially what it is. And I know we've we have focused a whole lot on what the Lord has done in Sarah's life over the years, but the Lord was working the exact same things in Hagar's life. The Lord is going to take both of them through the depths, in order to bring them out the other side that they might rejoice. Up to this point, Hagar has lived a horrible life.
Jeffrey Heine:She has had what a much harder life than Sarah. I mean, remember, she was a slave of pharaoh. And she was given away from pharaoh as a piece of property to Abraham. And If you remember back in chapter 16, there she's forced to sleep with an older man and carry his child. And then when she has, when she's pregnant, Sarah begins abusing her.
Jeffrey Heine:And so she runs away. I mean, it's a horrible life. You can't blame her. She runs away. God meets her as she runs away and says, I want you to go back.
Jeffrey Heine:I promise you that this child, I will take care of this child. I will make him into a great nation as well, and he will never be under anybody's control. So God gives her this glorious promise, but then she has to go back. She obeys. She goes back, and for 16 years now, she has been in a horrible place.
Jeffrey Heine:And all she's had to hold onto was the word of God. That's it. She never tried leaving again. She stayed where she was at, and all she could hold onto is God, You promised. You promised that Ishmael would be a great nation.
Jeffrey Heine:But the Lord made her wait 16 years before he began to fulfill his word to you. But the end result of this was faith was worked in her and she was indeed blessed. If 16 years ago she had kept running, she would have spent the rest of her life as a fugitive. Ishmael would have been a fugitive. But because she obeyed the Lord, now she's being sent out not as a fugitive, but as a free woman who can enjoy God's blessing.
Jeffrey Heine:God had to take her through that dark part first. But now, she's in the darkest part of her life before the Lord delivers her. Remember, Ishmael's 16 years old, so she's probably dragging him by his hand at this point. And even though he's a young man, a determined mom can last a long time. And she is going and she is going, and finally Ishmael can't go any more.
Jeffrey Heine:And in Hebrew literally, she just kind of flings them down. Basically, she can't drag them anymore. She's dragging them at this point. She just drops them. She can't watch them die.
Jeffrey Heine:So she goes over and says, a bow shot away. You know, just a distance away, in which she just sits, and she just waits for the end. Can you imagine a more destitute place? But I think the Lord was working faith in her. We read that she wandered in Beersheba.
Jeffrey Heine:If you're from Tennessee, Beersheba. There's I'm Baptist's Beersheba, which shouldn't be that way. But, anyway, she she wandered. All right? Earlier when she ran away, she was running back to Egypt.
Jeffrey Heine:It was a clear road back to Egypt where she was at. Instead, she literally wanders in the desert And, it has all these commentators scratching their heads about it. Why in the world would she go straight into the wilderness where she's gonna die? It's because I think she's claiming the promise. Just like Abraham went and he wandered, claiming the Lord's promise in his life, I think she had that promise and out of faith, she went and she wandered.
Jeffrey Heine:And we know she does have faith because the, Ishmael cries out to the Lord. We read that the Lord is with Ishmael. And so they do have this measure of faith there. But the Lord takes them here through the darkest part before He finally blesses them. And so what we learn from both Hagar and we learn from Sarah is this.
Jeffrey Heine:There are times that God's gonna take us to the pit, and he's gonna let us stay there for a long time. All in order to produce in us this kind of long suffering, this character, this depth to our being. And the end result is an indescribable joy that we would have never known before, and we get to walk with Him. And I would be remiss, as we close here, to not at least mention how this is all possible for us. How is it that God can actually bless us?
Jeffrey Heine:How is it He can take us out of the pit? Because we are sinners and we don't deserve it. And if you wanna know how, you have to look 2000 years forward from this story, in which there was another son who was abandoned by his father, another son who was sent to die, another son in his darkest moments was dying by thirst. So much, he cried out, I thirst. And, he cried out for help to God, but God didn't listen to his cry.
Jeffrey Heine:When he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And one of the things that we believe as Christians, is that Jesus Christ was forsaken. He was not heard, but He was abandoned when He was in the pit. And the reason so is, He would be denied God's blessing, so that we might never be denied it. And what that assures us, is that every pit that we go through, every dark time we go through, is just temporary.
Jeffrey Heine:It's just temporary. God does bring us out these things. There is no eternal, wrathful punishment ever waiting for us, because those things fell on Jesus. And so Jesus is our sole confidence. He's our sole hope in the dark.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the one who makes every blessing possible. And hear me, every joy that we experience in this life, even if it's the miraculous joy of a birth of a child, all of those things are just glimpses, glimpses of the joys that we ultimately receive in His presence. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, write these things on our hearts. So much more we could pull out from Your Word.
Jeffrey Heine:And, Lord, I pray that we would come to understand what we have heard, though, and it transform us. Jesus, thank you for going through the to the depths for us, so that we never have to remain there. We pray this all in your name, Jesus. Amen.