Mothers of Promises, Mothers of Problems

[Music] Welcome to Scott's cast, the Bible Teaching Podcast of Scott's Church Melbourne. [Music] As I've prepared through the week, I'd have to say I've quite literally been stealing the weight of the world on my shoulders because the inspired of the dust of history that sometimes seems to cling to the pages of Genesis if you've been listening to the news lately, the things that we're reading here this morning go right to the heart of a world-sized division that divide the split of our federal opposition parties, that's impacting our communities, issues being marched about every weekend, issues motivating fire bombs and massacres and anger and resentment, issues that go back not just a few years to land deal in 1949, but to a primal unfolding of a decision that had huge repercussions. So I've spent the last week thinking that maybe if I get it right this morning, we're going to have the answer to the world peace and solve all the issues of global politics in the next 22 minutes. It'll go no that to tall order. What I do want to flag right up front though is while these issues are divisive, even perhaps among us here today, please keep in mind that as Christians the New Testament has got to make a huge difference to the way we read and apply the origin stories we find here in Genesis and so we need to tread carefully and not jump to conclusions because the New Testament in a sense brings a surprise twist. There's a sting in the tail that if we take it seriously brings to the forefront the idea that God isn't so much interested in nationalities as he is in righteous hearts being shaped by his Holy Spirit in people who put their faith in his Son, no matter where you've come from. Now there you go, I've stolen the surprise, but that is exactly where we're heading as we pick up our series on Father Abraham and the promises of God in the sad story unfolding in Genesis chapter 16 to 18. We've seen over the last few weeks God's promise to produce from this old man Abram a re-blessing of the world that's gone so badly wrong in that terrible mistake of grabbing for that forbidden fruit of deciding right and wrong for ourselves, the most important person in the world being self. But the consequences of that decision painted in Genesis chapter 3 to 11. So Genesis 12, God chooses Abram and makes a promise, promise of people and a land and blessing. Blessing first of all for Abram's family line, but ultimately we're told blessing for all the families of the earth. Immediate and pressing problem being is no family line at all. Sari is wise, as born him no children. And right from the start we've been told she is already unrealistically old to even entertain the idea. So no doubt frustrated and sick to death of it after 14 years of hearing about God's promises. Sari comes up with a sari-gacy plan to get things moving. Which involves haggar, haggar her Egyptian slave girl. And here's where to be honest. All hell breaks loose. Now look it's not sari-gacy necessarily that's the problem. Interesting that sari-gacy still seems to have so many pitfalls, choose day on TV. They were talking about the need for new laws to regulate sari-gacy in Victoria because so often it leads to unhappier tongues. The real problem though is more subtle. There's a hint of it in the text in verse 3. A scene that brings our minds back to another wife. There brings an attractive offer to her husband in the garden. A wife who took the fruit and gave it to him. Look at the next slide on the screen, those key words in yellow. Exactly parallel the sequence back in Genesis chapter 3. So she said to Abraham, "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her." Abraham listened. And on it goes she said, "He listens, she took, she gave." In this case the fruit being the slave girl and he takes. And so it goes. Again the problems not so much, sexual aspect or of treating your servants like physicians which are problematic in themselves. But in this case the bigger problem that we saw in the garden, the bigger problem that we saw again last week. That believing God's promises is meant to me and taken God at His word and trusting Him for the outcome, not trying to fix it yourself with shortcuts. Of course so many of us still tend to do. Often with similarly disastrous outcomes. Servant girl, hey, you are. As soon as she sees those pink lines on her pregnancy test, she turns on her mistress with withering scorn. That's just the start. This is going to be a long running family desired that makes William and Harry or the big and family look like a picnic in the park. This is going to lead all the way to fire bombings in Melbourne. Hagar despises Sarah. Sarah blames Abram. Then beats Hagar and Hagar runs the wilderness road back to her homeland of Egypt. Where she is intercepted by an angel of the Lord with a message that's kind of a mix of good news and bad news. She's going to have a son named Ishmael. Now you may already be aware of the Islamic world. The Arab world more widely trace their origins all the way back to this point in history. And the Jewish world, their origins to what happens 14 years later with Isaac. You might think this is just an ancient version of the bold and the beautiful, but it's more than that. This is a hotly contested origin story. The angel says to hit, "Hagar, go back. I'm going to increase your descendants beyond county." Here's the start of a multinational Arab empire from which Islam much later is going to trace a line all the way back to Hagar and to Abraham. The angel goes on to say this, "More specific." Ishmael is going to be a problem child. He's hand against everyone, hostile to his brothers, which is sadly exactly the way the Old Testament story is out. Though it might not surprise you that Kuran sends lights. His passage slightly differently. His hand will be over everyone in the next slide, and he will rule over all his brothers, which of course then on either side is used to justify a lot of what we see in the news. Let's press on. Wanted notice as you look at this passage, the angel of the Lord, tells more kindly with saygar than serodas. It's actually grace here. There are big promises the name Ishmael literally means, God has heard. Ishmael is the result of serers, impatience and Abram's compliance and failure to trust the promises of God. But he is going to be part of the promise of future nations. Still it's not going to be easy. And he is not the one who will carry the line of God's blessing. It's been promised. So suddenly in the story it's 13 years later, the clock is ticked, the calendar has flipped over time, flies or not when you're waiting for any sign of God's faithfulness to His promises. Nothing's happening. Abram has turned 99. Sarah, I 10 years younger, and God appears to Abram again and says these words are the start of chapter 17. I am God Almighty, walk before me faithfully, be blameless. In other words, keep trusting me and don't do dumb stuff as if you don't trust me at all. Walk your tour, then I'll do what I promised and greatly increase your numbers. And to mark that says God, how about we change your name? No longer just the joke that your name means Father and you've got no kids, but we're going to amp it up and call you Father of many because of my promise. Just to make it even more unlikely as crazy as it sounds, your faithful but old-wast is part of the deal as well. She gets the name changed too. We're going to call her Princess Sarah instead of Sarah. And Abraham, that's his name now, chapter 17, verse 17, just falls down laughing. Pull a son, be born to me at a hundred years old, will Sarah bear a child, the age of 90? Abraham says to God, just bless Ishmael instead, the other one. That you see is not the plan. It might sound laughable, might sound incredibly unlikely. God says in verse 19, "Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you'll call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as never lasting covenant. He's to send it to us. He is the one. He'll take forward the promise of blessing." But look again, not all bad news about Ishmael. He'll be a father of twelve rulers. When it comes to my covenant of blessing, that's for Isaac. Your Sarah will bear to you this time next year. Now, remember this all still seems crazy unlikely. And when Sarah hears it in chapter 18, she laughs as well. I wonder if it's maybe what you'd call a sardonic laugh, maybe a slowly jaded laugh. I mean, now, changing nappies, sleepless nights now? I know plenty of younger mums who feel the same. If you can see the screen, our daughter shared this picture the other day of how her kitchen looks in school holidays. Sarah laughs, cynical, surely not now. And the angel of the Lord calls her out for it. Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? I'll return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. See, here's the thing about faith, about trusting the promises of God. It's great little verse to remember and come back to in your mind through the week. Or snow? Tired of waiting for things to turn out and thinking you need to fix things your own way with a few moral shortcuts. Is it all too hard for the God who raised Jesus from the dead? When in human terms its past hope, Sarah will have a son. You'll call him Isaac, which means he laughs. And through him will slow all the promise of blessing through this nation called Israel to all the nations of the world. And the long history that's going to unfold through the pages of the Bible. I do want to notice, and here's where we'll head towards an intersection today's news headlines. There is an intention behind God's plans as we saw last week, and it's worth another look, verses 18 and 19 of Genesis 18, with the emphasis on the words so that that appear twice. Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation. At all nations on earth will be blessed through him, for I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children in his household after him to keep the waves of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what is promised him. The whole point of this family of promise and the nation that follows is meant to be that God is setting out to build a new people of righteousness and justice. That's why God's going to have his hand on them. That is how he's going to bring blessing to the world. The goal is they're going to be like that from the heart, a people who love what's righteous, who are just and fair, because that's what their heart's beat full. As you follow Israel's story through to Moses, on Mount Sinai, God is going to show Israel what that righteousness looks like, as it gives them His law. Send it on the famous Ten Commandments, and another long list of rules and regulations and boundaries as well, that define what righteousness is going to look like. That the point always being, this is what God wants to come from the heart. Not just rules for a naughty kid, or an unwilling servant, and not thinking that they are counted as God's children because they're keeping the rules. The God's children already by faith like Abraham called to faithful living from the heart as His offspring. Turn over again through the Old Testament story, they fail on the other hand. They love to add rules to rules and regulations to regulations, and they desperately hold onto the form without the substance. To the point when Jesus arrives on the scene, He goes head to head with the Pharisees, religious leaders who are classic, religious nitpickers, and they ultimately have crucified. In the words of Jesus, they love to strain out the gnats from their drinking glass, and they swallow the camel's whole. Turn up or two, rules without heart, which was never God's intention. Don't heal people on the Sabbath, Jesus used to be resting instead. As on that same Sabbath, they planned a killing. The laws of Moses, ignoring that the righteousness God counts is the righteousness of Abraham's faith. Which breezes then very briefly to Paul's New Testament letter to the Galatians, are a church full of all kinds of people, people from all nations. Paul says, "I now welcome you." members of God's family too, exactly as God had always promised. Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians together as one, not under the law of Moses, he says, but because they follow Jesus and by his spirit are doing what's right and just from the heart. And Paul's Jewish opponents saying, "We're just not going to accept Gentile Christians, unless they're circumcised and take on all our third rules and all our commandments and all our laws." You think that says Paul, "You're living under slavery instead of under promise. These Jews, Jerusalem, even Jewish Christians, and the other ones who are ultimately children of haia." While if instead you've come to Jesus in faith no matter where you've come from, racially or any other way, your children of the free woman and you can call Sarah your map, Arab, Israeli, otherwise. Which to those Jewish aisers back then those keep the laws and the rules people, the Pharisee types, to the Christians who are pushing the Gentile converts to live under all the Old Testament laws, to hear those words must have been a scaredy. You're the ones who are children of the slave, don't go pointing the finger at anyone else. Just see if you can follow these logic as you hear those words again. These things are being taken figuratively. The women represent two covenants, one covenant is from Mount Sinai and best children who are to be slaves. This is Haga. Haga stands from Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the presence of Jerusalem because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free. She is our mother. In her youth, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, children of promise. It is a complete pivot. Brothers and sisters meaning Arab, Israeli, Asian or European, Melbourne or Madrid. Sarah is the true mother of anyone who comes to Jesus, hungry and thirsty for righteousness. You come in faith ready to be loyal, to be those people keen to do what's right and just. Move from the hearts of His Spirit and then become part of one family at peace. Haga, the other option. See, maybe we haven't got all the answers to world peace this morning, but maybe it's the glimpse of a start. Start with you and me. Because Jesus has opened the door to everyone exactly as was promised to Abraham. Jeff Morgan is an American born Jewish man who became a Christian, convinced that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Jeff moved to Jerusalem where he posts popular YouTube videos of conversations and debates he has on the street with Jewish people, but recently he posted something little different. Out on the streets in a marketplace, Fruit Store, he came upon a guy playing Christian worship music through his little Bluetooth speaker. And Jeff starts chatting to the Jewish guy, Jacob, who tells him that he's an Arab follower of Jesus and within moments they're talking like brothers. Old friends and by the end they embrace. And Jeff says, we're just one ahead. Those are the. Jeff says this is this is the solution. I wonder next time you're watching the news and feeling overwhelmed by the cycle of violence in the Middle East or in Melbourne. And try to remember that image. And Arab and a Jew embracing one another as brothers in Christ. Son of Hagar, son of Sir. Because they see that the solution is Jesus Christ who changes our hearts and turns us all into children of God. You've been listening to Scott's cast, the Bible teaching podcast of Scott's Church Melbourne.