Special episode: Many kids feel (or are made to feel) that they are mistakes for this or that reason. It’s an issue near and dear to my heart so we are going to tackle it.
Oh no! God has made it clear that it was always His plan to give a miracle baby through Sarah and now Abraham realizes that his beloved thirteen-year-old son Ishmael won’t be his heir. From now on, what was once just a mess is now heartbreaking and it will only get worse.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. (Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the Christian Standard Bible tweaked a bit to make it easier for kids to understand the content and the context without having to read an entire chapter every week!)
This week, we have to talk about something very important. Sarah and Abraham have now been promised a baby boy, but Abraham already has a thirteen-year-old son named Ishmael, whose mother is Sarah’s slave Hagar, whom she gave to Abraham as another wife so that they could have the son they needed to inherit everything and take care of them in their old age. God had promised Abraham a son but never said anything about how it would happen. After ten years of waiting, Sarah had decided to make it happen her own way. She did what anyone would do in those days, and we know this from reading cuneiform tablets from around the time when she was alive. She made another woman have a baby for her, and that baby was supposed to be Sarah’s son, but God had other ideas. He told Hagar that the child would be hers and not Sarah’s. It was only fair because Hagar was a slave, and she was forced to become Abraham’s wife—and she still had to work as a slave even though her son was a very important person in the household of Abraham!
Now that God is promising that eighty-nine year old Sarah will have a son, Abraham has to be both happy and sad at the same time. Let’s look at this week’s verses, Gen 17:17-22–
Abraham fell down with his face on the ground. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, actually have a baby?” So, Abraham said to God, “I wish that Ishmael could be your choice!” But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will have a baby boy, and you will name him Isaac. My covenant will be with Isaac as a permanent covenant for his future descendants. As for Ishmael, I do hear what you are saying. I will certainly bless him; I will make him fruitful and will multiply him greatly. He will be the father of twelve tribal leaders, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant with you is going to continue on with Isaac. Sarah will give birth to him around this time next year.” When he finished talking with him, God went away from Abraham.
Let’s talk about Ishmael. Was he a mistake? Well, Abraham and Sarah sure made a mistake in not being patient and Ishmael wasn’t God’s choice. God wanted a child who would be a 100% miracle—a child that showed the world that he was a God who could make impossible things happen. The other nations of people worshiped fertility gods and goddesses. They believed that goddesses like Atargatis and gods like Ba’al Hammon and Tammuz were responsible for making sure they had plenty of babies, lots of food, and many critters. But Atargatis couldn’t make a ninety-year-old woman have a baby. None of the gods of the nations around them could do that—all they could do was take credit for what our God was actually doing. Throughout the Bible, a big theme (and a theme is a main point that we see all the way through) is God showing His people that they don’t need anyone else because He is the God of everything and not just one or two things like the pathetic gods of the nations around them. We’ve talked about that a lot. Our God doesn’t need helpers! And He likes to prove it! God wants to start out His special people with a bang! Abraham and Sarah wanted to start it all out with something ordinary—with a young woman having a baby. And there isn’t anything strange about that! That’s normal.
But just because Abraham and Sarah did what was wrong, it doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with Ishmael. He’s an ordinary thirteen-year-old boy. What Abraham and Sarah did was a mistake but Ishmael wasn’t a mistake. People aren’t mistakes. Choices are mistakes. I hope that you can understand that. Sarah doesn’t love Ishmael, but that’s her problem. We don’t see it now but in a few more chapters, we will. That’s her mistake. Ishmael hasn’t done anything wrong but he is alive because Sarah did what was wrong, and then everything got messed up. Sometimes we hate people who remind us of our mistakes but that is a terrible thing to do to someone else. Ishmael, like every human being, is fearfully and wonderfully made. Sometimes, people get told that they are a mistake, but that is a lie. No person is a mistake. Every person is created to be the image of God—every single one. The only mistakes are when we don’t live like God wants us to live. But that’s about choices, and not about who we are. People who don’t live the way God wants today might start living in ways that please Him tomorrow. We humans are amazing creatures, the most amazing creatures in the world. You are amazing too. You weren’t a mistake, no matter what. In fact, if anyone tells you that you are a mistake, then they are making a huge mistake!
For a long time, I really believed that I was a mistake and that everyone would be better off without me. I sometimes wish that I could go back and give me a big hug and tell my younger self that the things I feel about myself aren’t always true. My feelings are real, when I am feeling sad or angry or happy, but what I believe about myself isn’t always the truth. They just feel like the truth! Sometimes those lies feel like the truth because that’s what people are telling us. It’s what they want us to believe. And how they say it and how they treat us makes us believe that they must be right. And sometimes the people telling us those lies have a group around them telling them how awesome they are even when they are being just awful. That’s a good time to learn how to be critical thinkers. Is a mean person actually as good as everyone tells them they are? Does that make sense? Or is the world upside down? I can tell you that the world is definitely upside down and what is wrong seems right and what is right can seem wrong. And we will see that all through the Bible, all the way to the end! I wish that I had understood that when I was a kid.
So, now that I have that out of the way, so that we know Ishmael isn’t a mistake as a person even though Sarah and Abraham did what was wrong to get him, let’s look at what happens in this week’s verses: Abraham fell down with his face on the ground. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, actually have a baby?” Next chapter, we will see Sarah do the exact same thing—only her face won’t be in the dirt. And like Abraham, she will only be saying it in her own mind. Not out loud because what God was telling him wasn’t something he had ever even dreamed would happen. When they were young, yes, they always hoped but when Sarah stopped being able to have babies, that was that. Women can’t always have babies. When we are teenagers, we become able to have babies but when we are older, our body parts just up and say, “Nope, we’re done.” And it’s very obvious when those things happen. I am at the age where my body said, “Nope!” a few years ago. Sarah was probably about my age when that happened too, because when we meet her she is sixty-five and it’s already too late for her to have babies. But when Sarah finally did have a baby, she wasn’t just grandma-aged but great grandma-aged!
I mean, God just told Abraham something crazier than in Genesis 12 when He said, “Follow me and I will lead you to a different place, but you will have no idea where you are going.” I mean, that’s just weird, but this is even weirder. They knew when a woman could and couldn’t have a baby in those days even if they didn’t understand the science behind it—remember that they believed in baby seeds that were just planted in the mom like a wheat seed in a field—they knew when it was and was not possible for a woman to have a baby and it hadn’t been possible with Sarah for at least thirty years. Of all the ways that Abraham thought he might have a son since he came to the Land of Canaan, this was actually the one that probably had never occurred to him. And Abraham didn’t know God well enough yet to understand that He can do absolutely anything. Abraham is just like we are—God proves Himself to us because He wants us to learn that we can trust Him. But Abraham laughed probably before he even asked himself if it was a good idea. Have you ever done that? Have you ever been in a quiet situation and all of a sudden something occurred to you and you busted out laughing?
Oh my gosh, when I was a teenager, my mom and I went to a Christmas concert down at the Murphys Diggins. And they wanted everyone to have a solemn and respectful moment where we would all hum Silent Night. But my lips started buzzing and I looked at my mom and my mom looked at me and all of a sudden we couldn’t stop laughing and I was trying so hard not to that I thought I might pee my pants right then and there. To this day, I can’t hum without thinking about it. So, I have a lot of compassion for Abraham here and Sarah in the next chapter. Sometimes, laughing is the furthest thing from our minds and it just comes right out anyway. Abraham was shocked. And he laughed. This is definitely one of those, “Let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone” moments for sure. Oops.
And so, after Abraham laughed, he thought about Ishmael, who he loves. The news was amazing—an answer to so many prayers for so long but those prayers had been forgotten because there was just no need to pray about it anymore. But what about their plans over the last fourteen years? Ishmael had been told that he would inherit everything. Abraham was teaching him everything he needed to know to carry on in his father’s footsteps as the patriarch of the family. Ishmael was a very important person in everyone’s eyes but now Abraham realizes that he and his wife have made a terrible mistake. He is going to have to break his promises to Ishmael. Ishmael will have to be second to his much younger brother. Abraham cried out to God and asked, “but what about Ishmael, can’t you accept him as my firstborn?” Have you ever made a promise that you had to break? It’s a hard thing to do. I have never had to break a promise this big and especially not to my kids. I hurt inside just thinking about how sad this would have made Abraham. I bet he was sick to his stomach.
But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will have a baby boy, and you will name him Isaac. My covenant will be with Isaac as a permanent covenant for his future descendants.”
God was telling Abraham that Isaac was always God’s plan and that hadn’t changed. Even the people who are chosen by God don’t just get to change God’s plans by doing things their own way or by taking shortcuts when they are not patient and trusting. Everything that God had promised Abraham—a great name and a great nation and kings and more descendants than anyone could ever hope to count and the Land of Canaan for their home—would happen through Isaac and his children and not through Ishmael and his descendants. It was what Abraham had wanted for Ishmael, and since God had been quiet for thirteen years, Abraham probably believed that they had made the right decision. God doesn’t send a lightning bolt to zap our butts when we do wrong. Usually, He doesn’t say anything and He lets us face the consequences. Just because God is quiet doesn’t mean that He approves of everything we’ve been up to. But I know a lot of people who really believe that God will always stop us from doing messed up things. That’s not God’s job. He lets us choose. It doesn’t change His plans but it does change our lives.
So, what about Ishmael? God knew that even though Abraham and Sarah had done something terribly wrong, it wasn’t Ishmael’s fault. So, God told Abraham that He had big plans to bless Ishmael: “As for Ishmael, I do hear what you are saying. I will certainly bless him; I will make him fruitful and will multiply him greatly. He will be the father of twelve tribal leaders, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant with you is going to continue on with Isaac.” Wow! God is promising even more to Ishmael than He did back when He was telling Hagar about what a great man her son would be. Not only would Ishmael be a mighty man but his kids would be too. God is promising to bless Ishmael, which means that He will continue to look out for him and won’t forget him. God will also do that for Lot’s sons and for Isaac’s son Esau later on in Genesis. He gave them land that the children of Israel weren’t allowed to take away from them. God is very trustworthy and generous. And he is going to give Ishmael just as many tribes as He will give to Abraham’s grandson Jacob. The covenant promises may belong to Isaac’s descendants but Ishmael’s future isn’t anything to sneeze at! Why? Because Ishmael isn’t to blame for Abraham’s and Sarah’s mistake. God proves that by blessing him. We can make mistakes and we will make mistakes, but we can’t be mistakes.
But God wasn’t finished, “…my covenant with you is going to continue on with Isaac. Sarah will give birth to him around this time next year.” When He finished talking with him, God went away from Abraham. Wow! After all this time—only another year to wait. That means that Sarah will be pregnant in just about three months and that’s not long at all. But what should Abraham do? Should he tell Sarah or would she think he was crazy or would it be cruel to get her hopes up after all this time? Before he had a chance to ask any more questions, God took off. God had said all He needed to say and He had said a lot! God will do that to Abraham in the next chapter as well. I suppose it is amazing that God talks to people at all and we should be grateful when He does but we can’t expect Him to stick around forever answering all our questions. I would probably never shut up if I had the chance. Just ask anyone who knows me in real life and they will tell you! I would never run out of questions.
In the Bible, all the way through, God reacts differently to the questions of different people. With prophets and normal people like me, He talks though dreams and visions and gives us riddles. But with Abraham and Moses, He would just flat out have a conversation with them without all the puzzles. Abraham and Moses both had the special job of starting a family and beginning a new kind of nation in the world. They weren’t just getting answers for themselves but for everyone. Especially Moses. But it is when Jesus gets asked questions that we learn the most about what it is like to have a conversation with God. A lot of people talked to Jesus about a lot of things but they all had different reasons for doing it. Some wanted answers—and some of the people asking their questions were honest and others were sneaky and trying to trick Him and trap Him into giving an answer that would get Him into trouble. Sometimes people asked Him what they thought the right question was but instead of answering that question, He answered the question they really should have asked instead. The Bible said that He knew what was in their hearts when they asked and that means He knew what they were really thinking and He also knew the real reason they were asking. I wish I could do that!
Have you ever been asked a question that wasn’t really a question? I have, and my problem is that I take almost all questions seriously and so I give honest answers when people don’t actually want them. I mean, when someone asks me if their hat looks dumb and I know they like their hat, I tell them what they want to hear because I know there is a difference between my opinion and what is actually true. If they feel good about their hat, why should I make them feel bad just because I don’t like it? But sometimes, on social media especially, someone will ask what looks like a real question and I will think they are looking for a real answer. But they don’t want a real answer because what they are looking for is a chance to give everyone their answer and to disagree with everyone who says something they don’t like. I hate it when people do that. It’s hard to trust people when they aren’t really asking a question but are setting up a trap that they want a person to fall into.
And I totally fall for it because I only ask those kinds of questions when I actually want answers. If I ask you something about the Bible, it is because I don’t know the answer to the question and not because I want to show off what I know and make people feel like they aren’t smart. If I want opinions, I will say, “what do you think about such and such.” I usually ask questions like that when we can’t actually know what is true.
But when Jesus asked questions, you had better know the answer when you said something. Jesus was wanting to teach you something—Jesus didn’t have to ask questions to find things out the way we do. Sometimes Jesus asked questions to see if people would tell Him the truth—like He did with the Samaritan woman. Other times, He asked questions when people were trying to trap Him so that they would trap themselves instead. But Jesus was never showing off, like the people who were trying to trick Him. Jesus wanted people to see who He was so that when He rose from the dead, that they would remember and follow Him. Sometimes that meant He had to make the people who were trying to trick Him look bad so that no one would want to believe what they had to say about Him. But what Jesus really wanted was for people to see the truth. That’s why, if they asked the wrong question, He answered the question they really should have asked. He knew He wasn’t wasting His time by talking to people who wanted to know about Him. But like God with Abraham, He had other places to go and other people to talk to.
He didn’t stay in one town talking to the same people forever—He went to all the different towns in Galilee, where He healed people and tossed demons out of them and fed them and taught them what God wanted them to hear. Jesus once said that He only ever did what He saw God doing. Jesus is the only one who ever knew or saw God and so Jesus always knew exactly what God would do, no matter what, and He did it. And so, we can trust Jesus like we trust God and we can trust God like we trust Jesus. Jesus wouldn’t ever lie about God and God would never lie about Jesus. Jesus went around teaching everyone not because He wanted everyone to see how smart He is but because God wanted everyone to know how wonderful He is and how different He is from the gods of the Romans who had invaded them and took over their country. When Jesus was done, He left and went somewhere else. That doesn’t mean that people didn’t want to ask Him any more questions or talk to Him longer, but that they had what they needed and Jesus could leave for another place. But, of course, sometimes the huge crowds kept following Him wherever He went!
God was like that with Abraham too. I am sure Abraham would have kept talking with God forever but God had said what He had come to say and it was time for their talk to end. God probably didn’t want Abraham to keep asking questions about things that were already decided. Like, “When exactly is Sarah going to have the baby?” Or, “Can’t Ishmael and Isaac both work together to run the family?” Maybe, “How on earth is Sarah going to have a baby? That’s just crazy talk!” We always want all the details, right? I am sure Abraham has had a lot of questions since that first day when God told Him to leave Haran and leave his entire family behind. And sometimes He prayed and asked and sometimes he just went and made decisions for himself about what God meant and what God wanted to happened and when He wanted it to happen. We usually think that sooner is better than later but God seems to prefer to wait until we can handle His promises or when it is obvious that it was a miracle—like baby Isaac!
So, if you have questions and God isn’t answering them, that’s okay. He doesn’t hate you. Sometimes, getting answers just makes everything worse and when we really need those answers, we will get them. The timing will be perfect.
I love you. I am praying for you. You know, I don’t care what anyone ever tells you when they are being angry or spiteful. You aren’t a mistake. God knows your name. You will make mistakes just like everyone else, but you are not a mistake.