We have come to the birth of the promise God gave to Abraham. We have been walking through Abraham’s life and gleaning life lessons we can apply to our own lives. In our last issue, we discussed Abraham’s dealings with King Abimelech and how they developed a friendship through some challenging circumstances.

Now we come to one of the most significant moments in Abraham’s life – the birth of Isaac, the promised son. After 25 years of waiting, after trying to fulfill God’s promise on their own through Hagar, after moments of doubt and laughter, God finally fulfills His promise. This is the moment that changes everything for Abraham and Sarah.

The birth of Isaac is not just about a baby being born. It’s about God’s faithfulness, His perfect timing, and how He fulfills His promises no matter how impossible they seem. Let’s examine this pivotal moment and discover the life lessons we can learn from Abraham and the birth of the promise.

The Background to the Birth of the Promise (Genesis 18:9-21)

We need to remember what happened before the birth of the promise, Isaac. This helps us to understand the significance of what is coming next. We have already covered this section in detail in this volume on Abraham’s life.

God appears to Abraham and Sarah in a theophany, an appearance by God in the Old Testament usually in physical form. Three “men” are walking along the road and Abraham gets them to stay for a while. While there, the men ask about Sarah and reiterate God’s promise that she will bear and heir for Abraham.

The key background for the birth of the promise that we will speak of below is that Sarah laughs because she is old and does not believe God’s promise. They have tried to fulfill that promise in their own way through Hagar. All that did was present strife in Abraham’s family.

Laughter will play an important part in Isaac’s life and story. It is certainly a major part of his birth. Let us now turn to describe the day that God’s promise is fulfilled in Isaac’s birth.

Sarah Reacts to the Birth of the Promise (Genesis 21:1-2, 6-7)

I want to approach the birth of the promise first through Sarah’s eyes and then through Abraham’s eyes. They both react with great joy but in different ways. Sarah never imagined she would ever have a child, let alone a son. She had been barren for 90 years.

Think about that for a moment. 90 years! In our day, many women live past the age of 90 but I have not heard of any woman have a child at 90. The only time this would have happened in the Bible so far would be the beginning of Genesis before the flood. Women were having children in the hundreds at that time.

But this is not the truth for Sarah. Those women were producing children at earlier ages than she was when Isaac was born. God came to them a year before he was born. The chapter opens by describing Sarah’s pregnancy as “the Lord visiting her.” This appears at least one other time in the Bible as it does here with Hannah (1 Samuel 2:11, 21).

It is a common occurrence that God is deeply involved in the conception and pregnancy process (Genesis 18:10-14; 25:21; 29:31; 30:17, 22-23; Judges 13:3-5; Ruth 4:13; Luke 1:24-25, 30-31, 36-37). When the Bible says “the Lord visited,” or “God remembered,” it refers to God’s presence with His people (Genesis 50:25; Exodus 4:31; 13:10; Ruth 1:6; Psalm 106:4; Jeremiah 29:10; Zephaniah 2:7; Luke 1:58; 7:16; 19:44).

God’s visitation is His presence with a person. In this case, God’s presence with Sarah gave her the ability to conceive a child even in her old age. The birth of the promise is nothing short of a miracle by God. That is why God did not accept Ishmael as the answer to His promise. It had to be done His way.

The importance of the birth of the promise was that it happened when both of them were older. Time does not control God’s promise. If He promises something, it will happen. You may have to wait a while, but you can be sure God does not promise something He does not deliver.

Abraham and Sarah had some rough patches of disbelief after God promised Isaac’s birth through Sarah. But God still delivered His promise to them. God is outside of time and space because it is His creation, but He works within the confines of time and space because that is where we are.

The background for our chapter was important because when God reiterated His promise that Sarah would bear a son for Abraham, she laughed in her tent. Her laughter was out of disbelief in God’s words and promise they had waited 25 years four, and her personally 90.

In Genesis 21:6, Sarah reacts to the birth of the promise with absolute joy and laughter. Isaac’s name means “laughter.” They literally named their son after the laughter from the joy they had when he was born.

But his name is ironic because she laughed at the prospect of God fulfill it His promise through her in the tent but now laughs because of the joy this little one brings into her life.

She also says that everyone will left over her because it is preposterous to believe that a barren woman for 90 years would suddenly have a child. No one ever expected Sarah to bear children at all. Only God can do that. Only God can change your situation.

I can imagine Sarah would often tell the story of how God opened her womb at the age of 90. Nobody would believe it except to see her son with her. Isaac created joy and laughter in their home. The laughter and joy that came from seeing God come through on His promise was a lifetime of happiness for them after his birth.

Abraham Reacts to the Birth of the Promise (Genesis 21:3-5, 8)

In Genesis 21:3-5, we see Abraham’s reaction to the birth of the promise. Even though Sarah was 90, the Bible says that she conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. It focuses on Abraham’s old age.

I believe the Bible stresses their old age because it took a long time to see God’s promise become a reality. And yet, it did. God is never late on His promises. It may seem like it has taken way too long for God to fulfill His promises, but He who promised is faithful.

Abraham aptly named the boy Isaac (Genesis 17:19). He produced such laughter and joy for Abraham in his old age. Can you imagine being 100 years old and running after a toddler? Immediately after God’s promise is fulfilled, and Isaac is born, Abraham is obedience. He does to Isaac what he has done to his whole household in obedience to God and in honor of God’s covenant with him.

He circumcises Isaac on the eighth day as God had commanded (Genesis 17:12). It is easy to obey God when things are going our way and He is fulfilling His promises to us. It’s much harder when the road is hard, we do not see the promise fulfilled yet, and we wonder if God is still watching us and making things happen for us.

We do not follow God just because we get the good stuff. It is a shallow faith that will only worship God after He has done great things for you. We must worship God no matter our circumstances. He does not change. He does not lie. He does not promise what He will not deliver.

We must have an unshakable faith like Abraham and Sarah to continue to dream about the moment God fulfills His promises to us. You will continue to see Sarah bearing a son in this small section because that is the impossible, amazing thing God does. The focus is actually on God, not Abraham and Sarah.

Every time they are mentioned, it is because God has done what He said He would do. They are enjoyed the result of it. It continues to reference Abraham’s age and his elderly place in his life. The point is that God will fulfill His promises no matter what our situation.

You can be waiting for years to see God’s promises fulfilled in your life. You could have tried to fulfill them yourself to no avail. You can lose faith in God as you wait for Him to fulfill His promises. But God will do what He says He will do. It is our job to stay the course like Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham continues to celebrate God’s promise. He celebrates on the day of a Isaac’s birth. He celebrates with a great feast on the day Isaac is weaned (Genesis 21:8). The theme when God fulfills His promise is laughter and joy. It is all over this chapter. But it will quickly draw to a close.

Trouble Because of the Birth of the Promise (Genesis 21:9-14)

Unfortunately, as we look at the birth of the promise, not everything is joyous and happy. There’s a big difference between laughing for joy and laughing at someone in mockery. With all the laughter and joy happening around Isaac’s birth, Sarah notices Ishmael laughing in mockery.

Perhaps the kid was just young and that’s the way teenagers act. But it’s more likely that Hagar and Ishmael laughing at them, not with them. Why do people want to throw a wet blanket on such a joyous occasion? Was it jealousy? Sarah understood jealousy.

It seems every barren woman in the Bible understands what jealousy is and how it operates in our lives. It is so hard to look at others who do not have the same problems and trials we have. We want what they so easily have. It’s human nature.

It irked Sarah. She couldn’t shake it no matter how much joy she had. She couldn’t let it slide. Perhaps this was something she needed to work on in her own character. It is hard to let something like that go. Everyone is joyous and happy for her. But the moment when she sees Ishmael laughing at her, she wants to throw them out all over again.

This is as much part of the story of the birth of the promise as the first part in Sarah’s and Abraham’s reactions to the birth of the promise. Sarah has already thrown Hagar out of the camp and sent her into the desert (Genesis 16:5-6).

She goes to Abraham to try to get him to do her dirty work. She wants Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp again. Abraham is a man caught between two women. He does not want to cast her out because Ishmael is his son also.

This is why God created marriage to be between one man and one woman. When you involve more than one person in marriage, things get hairy fast. Someone is always unhappy. Demands are always placed on someone else. This is not the way marriage should be.

When we try to fulfill God’s promises before His time instead of waiting, we always mess things up. We make them much worse than they should be. This is what happened between Abraham and Sarah. Sarah let a woman come between them, and now she is letting Ishmael come between them.

Despite how Abraham feels about the whole situation, God reassures him that everything will work out. He promises Abraham that Ishmael will also be a great nation(Genesis 21:13).. God had the grace to make the situation work out for the best of both parties. God extends His grace to Ishmael because of Abraham. He is just that good! He blesses us and those around us.

Abraham is learning to trust God, that God has his back and will take care of his family. I can’t imagine how hard it was for Abraham to send them away because Ishmael was his son. Abraham is a man who has, for the most part, mastered obedience. He gets up early in the morning and sends them away (Genesis 21:14).

He gave Hagar some provisions. She received some bread and a skin of water. I wonder if Abraham could have given her more than that. We learn from the next section that Hagar is dying in the wilderness because she runs out of water. Perhaps that is all Sarah would allow Abraham to give her.

Whatever the case, Abraham did what God commanded him to do. He had to rely on God to take care of them wherever they went. He can only do so much. God takes care of us no matter our situation.

Life Lessons from the Birth of the Promise

Let us consider some life lessons from the birth of the promise. First, Sarah teaches us lessons. She gave Abraham Hagar to try to fulfill God’s promise on her own. We must trust that God will fulfill His promises. If He promises to do something, He will do it in the perfect timing and circumstances.

We must have faith in what God has promised. He is faithful to do it. We can complicate the process if we try to make it happen with our own resources. God has never failed us and He never will.

We learn from Abraham and Sarah to enjoy the fulfillment of God’s promises in our lives. It is so hard for some of us to learn how to enjoy the goodness of God, to celebrate His goodness, to proclaim His name, praise Him, and give Him the glory.

Why are we stunned when God does what He has said He would do? Perhaps you are dreaming about that moment. Maybe you have forgotten about God’s promise to you or it has been so long that you may have even given up on seeing it happen.

I have been paralyzed for almost 12 years and I still wake up every morning and ask God if today is the day that I will walk again. I refuse to give up on God and His healing promises for me. Don’t ever let the devil convince you that God will not do what He has said He will do.

Satan likes to wage war on us by letting us think that time has changed God’s promises and their fulfillment. He wants you to think that it’s been so long God has probably forgotten about you. But God never forgets. He is with you every step of the way.

Every part of your trial and the waiting you do for His fulfillment is part of God’s process and plan. He is doing great things in you to prepare you for that fulfillment. Don’t give up moments before God fulfills His promises in your life.

We need to learn how to praise God and thank Him for what he is about to do. We need to have so much faith that it will happen that we cannot help but give Him glory now for what He has not yet completed. We know He will do it, so why do we have such a hard time living like He has done it?

You may be in the situation like me where it is evident every moment of every day that you are still not living out that promise. I dream of what it’s like to walk again. Some of those dreams are not wishful thinking. God is given me visions of doing things and not being paralyzed anymore. Trust in God’s visions and the little things He does to show you the promise is on its way.

When the promise happens, and God has fulfilled it, you need to celebrate like never before. Make much of what God has done for you. Don’t stop doing it. A good rule is to spend the same amount of time praising God and celebrating it, telling everyone about it, as it has taken for the promise to be fulfilled.

That’s right. If it took 12 years for you to be healed, praise God for 12 years. Even more, never stop praising God and celebrating your promise fulfilled. Not every day with Isaac could have been the best day.

The boy had to grow. He would mess up. Abraham and Sarah had to parent him through these times. It couldn’t have been a joy every day. But they were always thankful that Isaac was in their lives.

You can worship God with every action that proves the fulfilled promise in your life. You can imagine what God will do, how He might do it, and when. But there’s nothing like the moment He does it. It will be an amazing moment. Praise God for that moment that will soon be your reality.

We have other lessons to learn from the birth of the promise. These will also help us grow. There was trouble in the celebration of Isaac’s birth. With all the laughter that was happening in the joy came the derision and scoffing of Hagar and Ishmael. They made fun of Sarah’s joy.

Sarah let that get to her. She could not truly enjoy this moment because she noticed the negative things. There will be negative things in your life. When you are high on the mountain with God, you will experience valleys and lows.

How you react to them makes all the difference. These low times in our lives are times God wants to use to grow our character and faith. He wants to make us better than we are. He wants to give us thicker skin. He wants to teach us how to ignore the naysayers in our worship.

We need to learn to stop looking around at everyone else. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t look at what other people are doing, saying, or making fun of you for. So what? Maybe they’re just jealous because you have had this moment with God that has changed your life.

Pray for them. Shower them with God’s goodness and mercy. Give them grace. Be the one looking out for others. God needs to make you bigger spiritually and emotionally than you are. Change your perspective; change your reaction.

Another lesson we can learn from Abraham and Sarah trying to fulfill the promise before the birth of the promise is that bad things happen when we try to do what only God can do. We use our own resources, abilities, and talents to try to do what God has promised to do for us.

He does not need our help. Whatever we do can hinder and maybe even prolong the time before God fulfills His promise. Abraham and Sarah tried to make a son for Abraham, involving Hagar, and creating a world of hurt and problems for their family.

Even today, the Arabs and Israelis, descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, are still fighting. The whole world is on edge because of these two groups. The brothers are still at each other’s throats. Abraham and Sarah created issues for their family. They created issues for the whole world for centuries.

Do not try to do what God has promised to do for you. Do not look to your own resources. The whole point of a promise from God is that it is too big for you to do. It requires you to rely on God instead of yourself. It requires the miracle. It requires your obedience and sacrifice.

God is doing big things behind the scenes and in your life in the waiting time. Do not short-circuit His blessing for you. Do not give up before He fulfills it. We have the biggest problem in America, and generally the West, with being able to wait on God.

We want everything now, instantaneous, simultaneous. All those big words mean is that we do not know how to wait for Him. Only God can, and when we try to do it instead, we just mess it up all the more. Don’t push it. Don’t force it. Learn to wait on God for His promise to happen.

The last lesson we can learn from the birth of the promise is that God takes care of us in our distress. We may not see it in the moment, but when we look back, we see how God has done everything so astoundingly good.

You are in the moment right now. You have limited vision. You cannot see ahead of yourself. Or at least only so far ahead. Only God can see the end. Picture your trial or situation like a marker. There’s a beginning, middle, and end to the marker. If you get real close to one part of the marker, you cannot see the whole thing.

You cannot see what the beginning or end look like. You can only see the part that you are looking at. The same is true of our trials. We cannot see the whole picture. We do not know when the end will come. We must trust God for all of it.

God always takes care of us. Jesus said that if God will take care of the flowers and the birds, He will most certainly take care of us. We must trust Him in the messy middle. If we do not, we will give up just before the end.

We will not learn the lessons God wants us to learn. And like history, we may have to return to this trial again to learn those lessons. The best thing you can do in your trial and suffering is to have an unshakable belief in God’s goodness. That is all you need to hang onto when everything else is falling apart.

The Saga Continues…

We are not finished with our trek through the life lessons we can learn from Abraham. We will continue down this road with him as we look in the next issue at how Abraham had to sacrifice Isaac. It’s crazy to think about that since we have just talked about the blessing God gave Abraham and Sarah in the birth of the promise, Isaac. We will look at that next time.