Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Draw Near to God | Torah | Genesis 21:8-20

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Do you feel forgotten, cast out or ignored? Do you wonder if you can even bear to go on in your situation? Tanya shares how Hagar felt this way in Genesis 21:8-20. Listen to find out how God seeks out unwanted and forgotten people and draws near to them. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 21:8-20 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. That's the opening verse in Genesis chapter 21. Isn't it amazing? Yawai visited Sarah. Yahweh did to her what he had promised. The CSB says it like this. The Lord came to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah what he had promised.

I love the way this chapter opens with the focus on the Lord, calling us to such a high view of who he is and opening our eyes to the wonder of what he does. I love that Genesis 21 opens with God, because God is the focus of this. narrative, the one we need to keep our eyes on as modern readers, and the one Abraham and Sarah and Hagar could keep their eyes on. I think a lot of our problems could be solved when we have a high view of God, when our perspective is lifted toward his attributes, and we focus less on how

and more on who. Other than calling us into this vertical recognition with God, chapter 21 really needs no introduction to grab your attention. So let me catch you up and we'll dive in. Sarah, you might recall that God renamed her a few chapters ago, owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar. God promised Abram also renamed Abraham by God a few chapters ago, that he would make him into a great nation with descendants as numerous as the stars. And when God told him this, they were already very old. Sarah didn't think she could have children anymore, so she went into panic mode and told Abraham to conceive with her servant Hagar instead. For obvious reasons, we know this wasn't a great idea.

While we can empathize with Sarah's feelings, it's hard to have empathy for her actions. At best this was a gross mistreatment of her servant. At worst, it was non-consensual sex in order to have a baby. And the scripture alludes to this because when Hagar found out she was pregnant in Genesis 16, 4, she said she looked with contempt on her mistress. And the seeds of bitterness were planted between mistress and servants, and Hagar ran away from the camp when she found that she was pregnant.

And she was really young. So she fled and found herself far away and alone. But an angel of the Lord met her by a spring of water out in this wilderness and told her to go home, to go back to her mistress, told her to name the child she was carrying Ishmael, which means the Lord listens. Isn't that beautiful? For someone who must have felt so alone, Hagar wasn't. Even in the wilderness, the Lord pursued her. And he listened. God was with her.

The Lord gave the baby a name that affirmed he had heard of her afflictions, and Hagar in turn gave God a name. Elroy, you are a God who sees me. Hagar wasn't abandoned. She was hemmed in by her seeing, listening, Lord. How different this God is from the one the Israelites would later cast out of gold in the form of a calf. How different this God is from the one we think needs our assistance. Now, fast forward about 14 years to another birth story. The Lord

visited Sarah as he had promised, 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, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. Now, Isaac means laughter. Sarah laughed when the angel told her she would have a baby at her 90s. And when Isaac was born, Sarah laughed for joy. And Sarah's friends laughed with her. How marvelous this old lady nursing a baby.

But there's another laughter in Genesis 21 that complicates. the narrative, and it came from 14-year-old Ishmael. Genesis 21-8 relates, The child grew and was weaned. That's Isaac. And on the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had born to Abraham was mocking. And she said to Abraham, get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son, Isaac. Now, at this time, when Isaac was weaned, his half-brother Ishmael was probably wearing his first mustache, his muscles were probably bulging under his high metabolism and active lifestyle. His father was the patriarch of the camp and his mother was a servant.

How complicated his life must have been. How complicated Sarah's life must have been. Watching the way her husband loved a child that wasn't hers, a child that had been circumcised along with his father. the child Abraham pleaded with God to be included in the covenantal promise. How complicated Hagar's life must have been? What was her place now that there was another boy growing up who carried Abraham's seed? Sarah handled the complication by telling Abraham to cast the servant and her child out of the camp. Out of sight, out of mind, basically.

If she didn't have to see them anymore, they couldn't interfere with her family and the promise God had given her husband. Can you just picture young Hagar with her very young but growing teenage son cast off to survive for themselves in the desert? In a touching picture of Abraham's love and grief, the departure is recorded. 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. so they were cast out with a skin of water, some bread, and the torn love of an earthly father. But it wasn't out of sight, out of mind for God. Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the desert until the water ran dry. And then Hagar, she was unable to watch her son wilt away and die.

So she placed him under the shade of a shrub, walked away, and sobbed. Her hope was gone. Genesis 21-17, God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. This woman at the well, Hagar, finding the water she needed, to give life to herself and her son points us to another story in the Bible about a well.

A Samaritan woman came to a well where Jesus was resting, and Jesus asked her for a drink. She couldn't believe that he, a Jew, would even make eye contact with her, let alone converse with her, let alone ask her for water. But Jesus, the one who breaks all barriers, wanted to step into her complicated life and have a relationship with her. He wanted her to know him as her living water, the savior that gives her the water of life that never runs out. She was a cast-off. Her life was complicated by sin. She had no wealthy family promising to pass along an inheritance of gold and silver and land to her and her children. She probably couldn't think or plan far beyond her need to return to this well day after day for the water to survive.

but she met Jesus at that well. He saw her. He heard her. He called her into a covenant relationship with himself, where she would receive every spiritual blessing God had laid out since the foundation of the world. Hagar was sent away without any of the earthly blessings for herself or her son. But the God who would send his own son to die for the whole world met her in the desert. He was with her.

The chapter that began, Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised, ends God was with the boy when he grew up. Do you think Elroy, the God who sees you, cares about the same things the world cares about? Do you think he's limited by the things that you think limit you? Truly, listener, I wish that your life wasn't complicated.

I wish you weren't sitting by a well, wondering how you were going to survive in whatever situation it is that is quite literally taking your strength away or the strength of your children or someone you love. You might be sitting beside the well looking around and asking, how. But the Lord who sees you and hears you wants to show you who. He is the one. He is the one. He is the one who sees you even when someone else casts you out. He is the one who hears you, even when you don't know what you need or how much you need him. It may feel less concrete at first, but you can choose to draw near to him by reading even just a small passage of his word and writing down a part of it that's meaningful to you on a note card and just taping it to your

desk. Or you can pray through the Lord's prayer to him, line by line for a few minutes. and just think about who he is. The Lord who gave Sarah a baby and saw Hagar in the desert is the same Lord that is with you. He has given his son to bring you into the covenants of the promise, to give you hope, and to bring you near to him by the blood of Christ. He has a glorious inheritance for you that is centered around living with your heavenly father who loves you forever.

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