Reading Comprehension, Indoctrination and Israel

 

Do you remember in high school, maybe as late as grade 10, when we had to do these rather silly comprehension tests in class. How many of us saw them as a little degrading, because they were so basic? You would be given this short paragraph, maybe written in the form of a newspaper article, or a chapter from a textbook, and it would describe something that had happened. Maybe it was describing how a government was planning to build a dam, or it was telling some kind of news story about an event that happened, or just some other basic account written by someone. And you would be asked to read this and then answer some questions on the page below about what you had just read. How many of you thought, “Why are we being asked to read this? It is so basic what this is saying. This is high school, not 5^th grade.”

Perhaps, however, those comprehension tests were more necessary than we thought? Because there are some basic and fundamental themes in the Scriptures pertaining to who God’s people are that many people do not seem to understand still. 

To be fair, this is also a result of indoctrination. Some people have been so thoroughly indoctrinated with a particular belief, that they cannot see how large parts of the Bible not only do not support their favoured doctrine but clearly contradict it. They have been trained to read the Bible through a lens, and that lens is powerful. When someone is emotionally invested in that lens it is almost impossible to break through by simply making an argument. Which is part of why I introduced my piece the way I did, some people might find this introduction a bit insulting or even arrogant, which is good, now you are a little bit angry, emotional or offended, and this might help break through the programming; possibly at least. Sometimes you have to get people emotional for them to be open to listening.

One of those passages which is key to understanding the Bible is Genesis 16. If you miss what this passage is saying, a lot of the rest of the Scriptures will be confusing to you. Or more accurately, you will confuse much of what the rest of the Bible says about the nature of God’s people. It is not an accident that the Apostle Paul harkens back to this passage in his own writings to outline the difference between being of the people of God and not of the people of God. Let’s have a look at it and examine why this is the case.  

We see this happen at the start of the passage, Sarai gives her servant girl to her husband Abram to be his wife,

“1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.”

The first thing this passage teaches us is that the lineage of God’s people will not come about by the flesh. Another way to put this is that Abram cannot fulfil the promises of God through the flesh. All this achieves is to cause him and Sarai trouble.

Many Christians want to criticize Abram here for sinning by laying with this other woman. But what he did was not a sin in the Old Covenant era. He did not just have sex with this woman, it says she became his wife. The Old Testament permitted polygamy, even if it was never the ideal. That is not the error that he and Sarai made.

The error they made was thinking they could fulfil God’s promise through the flesh. God had already promised Abram that he would be a great nation (Gen. 12:1-3), with lots of descendants (Gen. 13). God told him he was going to have more descendants than he could count (Gen. 15:1-6). Abraham and Sarah probably thought that they had permission to fulfill this promise by their own means. The error Abraham made was listening to his wife instead of trusting the promises of God, the same error that Adam made. Man cannot fulfil the promise of God, only God can.

But the child they were going to receive was not going to be of the flesh, but of the promise. This passage is teaching us that it is not the children of the flesh which count in God’s economy, it is the children of the promise. All seeking to fulfil the promise through the flesh did was bring contention, and division in the household, and as a result Hagar is kicked out.

Next we read this,

“7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her,

“Behold, you are pregnant
    and shall bear a son.
You shall call his name Ishmael,
    because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
12 He shall be a wild donkey of a man,
    his hand against everyone
    and everyone's hand against him,
and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

The second thing we see here is that in some way God even cares for the children of the flesh. They are not the covenant people, but they are not outside his blessing. Doesn’t Jesus tell us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust? What this is showing us is that very early on God has an intention to bless the Gentiles, to bless the nations. He promised in Genesis 12 that through Abram the nations would be blessed, and in this passage we see the beginning of the nation of the Ishmaelites and that God is blessing these people.

So, we have here two foundational truths now: First, it is about the children of the promise, not the children of the flesh. Second, God is going to bless the Gentiles nations as well, because he has a heart for people born outside of the line of promise.

Lastly, we see this,

“13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.

15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.”

We see here that God cared for Hagar and Hagar called out to the living God and was saved from death by him. Hagar is outside the line of the covenant people, Paul is going to show this in Galatians. Though she is not in the line of the covenant people, God still had mercy on her, saved her, and she called upon the name of the Lord as a result and praised him. 

The covenant people may think there is something special about them because they are the covenant people and let this go to their heads. But they should not forget that the covenant people exist to bless the people of this world. Hagar is blessed because she is connected to Abram. How many women were kicked out of homes just like her in this era? The number is outside our ability to know, but we know it would have been high. This kind of human jealously between women in harems is well documented and understood. But Hagar, by virtue of being in proximity to Abram, is blessed.

So, this passage gives us three of our big themes of scripture. In fact foundational themes:

1.     Salvation and blessing is about the promise of God and faith, not the flesh. Or to put it another way, you cannot fulfil the promises of God through the flesh.

2.     God cares for the Gentiles.

3.     The Gentiles are blessed by the covenant God made with Abraham.

If you miss this, you will make the mistake of the Pharisees and end up in the error that God’s blessing carries on through Abraham’s descendants because of their flesh. But this is not the case. It carries on through his descendants through their being in the covenant of blessing. It has nothing to do with the flesh, and everything to do with faith and trust in God and his promises. Those who trust God are in the covenant blessings, those who do not are under a curse, no matter their genetics.

Which is why Paul says in his day that Jerusalem, the capital city of those descended from Abraham and who claim to be his people, is represented by Hagar:

“21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
    break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
    than those of the one who has a husband.”

28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman” (Gal. 4:21-31).

In Genesis 16 Hagar and the child of the flesh are outside the covenant. Whereas, the future child of promise, Isaac, is in the covenant. The flesh, or being physically descended from Abraham, counts for nothing when it comes to being considered God’s people. You can be living in Jerusalem, and be physically descended from Abraham, but if you do not believe in Jesus, the ultimate child of promise, you are outside the covenant people, you are not of the Israel of God. Only those who trust in the promise by faith are in the people of God.

The capital city of the Church is Jerusalem, Zion, the city of God. But it is not the city in the land of Canaan, that is a city of spiritual slavery. It is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of freedom. Paul bases this teaching on passages like Genesis 16. Which lay out these foundational truths: only the child of promise counts as being part of God's people, not the child of the flesh, and the responsibility of the child of promise is to reach the unsaved. The unsaved are those who think the flesh is all that counts. They must be taught it is only faith in the promises of God that counts and makes you his people.

If you understand this basic teaching from all the way back in Genesis you can say with John the Baptist, who knew this before the gospel of Jesus was fully explained by the Apostles, this:

“7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt. 3:7-9).

The flesh counts for nothing when it comes to being the people of God. Only the promise, only faith. All who trust in the Lord are in Israel, all who do not are not. This has been true since the days of Abram, before he was even called Abraham, “father of many”. As the children’s song says, “Many sons, had father Abraham. Many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let’s just praise the Lord.” Only those who trust in Christ are accounted among the people of God, Israel. This is among one of the most basic and consistent teachings in Scripture, but many deny it. Those who do make the error of the Pharisees. They mistake what it means to be children of Abraham.