THE SPLINTERING OF RELIGION, A MOMENTOUS STORY

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

 

Michael calls our reading of the passage of Scripture about which each week’s blog concerns itself, a beautiful term — he says that we are “LISTENING to the lessons of the Bible.” How perfectly that sums up the experience! Biblical scholars exegete, some others study or read, but what Michael is describing is actually a very different and more moving experience. The words of Scripture begin to take on a life of their own when, like Michael, you just sit back and “listen,” as they speak lessons to you, as God speaks to you. It is transcendent while, at the same time, entirely practical. It is truth. Today, this “Listening to the lessons of the Bible,” is especially important.

 

Michael and I are starting in Genesis, Chapter 16. Most are familiar with it. It is the story of Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian servant, and Ishmael, her son with Abram. You recall these verses:

 

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The LORD has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So, after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.” 

(Genesis 16:1-4) NIV

 

Almost immediately, a completely foreseeable conflict between Sarai and Hagar developed:

 

“When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.

‘Your slave is in your hands,’ Abram said. ‘Do with her whatever you think best.’ Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.”

(Genesis 16:4-6) NIV

 

Sarai may have had no regard for her servant but God did. In fact, He had great concern — so much so, that He sent His own angel to her:

 

“The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert…”

(Genesis 16:7) NIV

 

Here, a famous exchange takes place. After Hagar tells the angel of the LORD that she is running away from Sarai,

 

“The angel of the LORD told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her. The angel added, ‘I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

(Genesis 16:9-10) NIV

 

Wait a minute, isn’t this language practically a mirror’s image of what God just told Abram?

 

(“Look up in the sky and count the stars — if indeed you can count them…So shall your offspring be.”)

(Genesis 16:5) NIV

 

In each instance, God, Himself, and God, through His emissary, the angel of the LORD, is giving a great promise. One recipient is the Patriarch elect, Abram, soon to be Abraham. The other is Hagar, an Egyptian servant to Sarai.

 

Furthermore, the angel of the LORD told Hagar that he knew she was pregnant with a son and that she should name him Ishmael. Why this name? The angel tells her that it is because,

 

“…The LORD has heard of your misery.”

(Genesis 16:11) NIV

 

The name Ishmael means, “God hears.”

(“Got Questions,” “What Happened to Ishmael in the Bible?”)

 

Hagar’s reaction was both heartfelt and highly accurate in describing God. As she was given the name for her son, so she, in turn, named the gracious God Who sent His angel to comfort and direct her:

 

“She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.”

(Genesis 16:13) NIV

 

Yes, how well said. God saw her when rejection came from every other quarter and person. This God of ours is no fair weather friend. He finds mankind in our desert seasons and in every wilderness. He sends comforting angels who are wise and who know what to do next.

 

Michael says,

 

“Be sympathetic to the world. It needs a little love, a little guidance. Help ease somebody into the next part of life.”

 

Yes, this is the example set over and over again by Almighty God. He is gracious to the brokenhearted. He sends his personal messengers to us in these moments. Trying to decide whether to comfort such a person, whose path comes alongside our own, should not be something we have to deliberate. It is made so clear as we  “listen to the lessons of Scripture,” as Michael says.

 

Going back, for a moment, what was the first thing this spokesman for God, this angel of the LORD, told Hagar to do? He said for her to return to Sarai and to acquiesce to her. Now, we ask ourselves why this was so important to God that He made it His angel’s first instruction?

 

Clearly, God, Himself, wanted Ishmael to grow up in his father, Abram’s, household. He cared so much about unity in this now blended family that he sent THE angel of the LORD to insure it. A now-pregnant Hagar returned to Abram and Sarai.

 

“So Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.”

(Genesis 16:15-17) NIV

 

To summarize the following years, Ishmael and Hagar remained there. What was God’s provision for him? When Abram was ninety-nine and Ishmael was entering his teenage years, God spoke directly of Ishmael in Genesis 17, the chapter where something very momentous happened on a number of levels. We will discuss this in depth next week. But, suffice it to say, that God introduces the child that He says will be born in a year, the child, Isaac , the offspring of Abraham and Sarai who is just becoming Sarah.

 

With regard to Ishmael, and contemporaneous with God’s introducing Isaac, Abraham asked this of God:

 

“And Abraham said to God, ‘If only Ishmael might live under your blessing.” God responded right away to the Abram who had just grown into his true name, Abraham:

 

“And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers and I will make him a GREAT NATION.”

(emphasis added)

(Genesis 17:20) NIV

 

This promise by God is reiterated later, after the birth of Isaac when, at a feast celebrating the weaning of the child, Sarah sees Ishmael mocking Isaac and she demands the removal of both Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham reacts to this:

 

“The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son.”

(Genesis 21:11) NIV

 

God reassured him:

 

“I will make the son of the slave into a NATION, also, because he is your offspring.”

(emphasis added)

(Genesis 21:13) NIV

 

After Hagar and Ishmael are sent away to the desert, God’s attention turns directly to them:

 

“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…’ GOD was with the boy as he grew up.”

(emphasis added)

(Genesis 21:17-18, 20) NIV

 

Michael, in not adding to nor taking away from Scripture, put it so well:

 

“I can’t interpret God or an angel. It is so important to not add hats to God’s words or ideas.”

 

God’s words should be taken at face value. God said, “a great nation.” This is repeated and unequivocal. God’s care of Ishmael is tender and consistent.

 

We know that Ishmael and Isaac were both present to bury Abraham. Scripture describes this. Looking far ahead of our story,

 

“Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years. Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. HIS SONS ISAAC AND ISHMAEL BURIED HIM.” (Genesis 25:9) NIV. How highly significant it is that, apparently, these two brothers were not estranged at the time of their fathers death. Additionally, how interesting, as we will learn later in Genesis, that God would use the Ishmaelites to bring Joseph out of the pit where his brothers had put him. They took him to Egypt where, of course, his ultimate, God-appointed destiny lay. 

(Genesis 37:27) NIV

 

Truly, the chapters of Genesis that recount this story, are what Michael calls

 

“the pivoting point of the world. It is the splintering of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.”

 

Yes, tucked away in Genesis, is a story from centuries ago and, also, a story about today.

 

Michael says,

 

“And it all started from this one man’s seed — when he was still Abram and then became Abraham.”

 

How easily overlooked this unifying point is among these three faiths!

 

How significant and timely are David’s words in this Psalm:

 

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

‘May those who love you be secure.

May there be peace within your walls

and security within your citadels.’

For the sake of my family and friends,

I will say ‘Peace be within you.”

Psalm 122:6-8 (NIV)

 

POSTSCRIPT:

You may be wondering what happened to Lot!

Next week, he reenters the picture in an amazing chapter of Genesis. Until then, God bless you ever so mightily!