Sojourning: The Fear of Hagar
God is Free
Genesis 21:8-21
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. June 21st, 2026
God is free, but he is not arbitrary. I mean, God can do what ever he wants, but God does whatever he wants. The wants and desires of God are not fickle.
The freedom of God can be both a joy to us and an anxiety. The freedom of God can be an anxiety because it means we have no control of God. It can be a fearful thing to pray, “thy will be done.” I have often let those words leave my lips with great hesitation. I want to be comfortable, but God’s will is not necessarily that I would be comfortable. Sometimes it conforms with God’s will that I be very uncomfortable, or that I even suffer. In the eyes of God there are far more important things he wants for me than mere comfort. God wants me to be holy. And the comfortable do not grow in holiness.
But God’s freedom can be a joy because it means God is free to be love, pure love, complete love. God’s love is not constrained by anything. God’s love is not exhausted. Human love can be constrained by resentments or fears. Our own love can be exhausted over time if we don’t take care of ourselves. It is not so with God. As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn Come O Thou Traveller Unknown, “pure universal love thou art.”
Our reading this morning from Genesis concerns the pure universal love that God is.
God made a promise to Abraham that he would bless him, and make him a blessing. That he would be the father of a great nation even though he was old. But God’s promise was long in its fulfillment. So Sarah, his wife, suggested that he have a child with her slave child Hagar. This sounds very strange to our ears. But in the context of Abraham’s day a slave was available for sexual pleasure and a child born of a slave could stand to inherit the family property if need be.
But at the same time I don’t want to pass over Hagar’s situation here. She did not have a choice in this arrangement. And the intent of Abraham and Sarah was that this child that Hagar would give birth to, Ishmael, would be more Abraham’s son than the son of a slave woman. Even worse, when Hagar is pregnant with Ishmael Sarah’s resentment burns. She so grievously mistreats Hagar that Hagar runs away into the wilderness. There she has an encounter with the angel of the Lord who sends her back.
Given our sermon last Sunday where I mentioned that while Abraham has a close relationship with the Lord while Sarah only speaks to the Lord once, I don’t think it’s insignificant that Hagar encounters God much as Abraham did. And like Abraham Hagar receives a promise, “You are now with child and you will have a son. you shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
Hagar even names God, “the God who sees me.”
This morning’s reading concerns the second time she leaves Sarah. This time is after Isaac is born and after Ishmael is born. Sarah’s resentment continues to burn and after she sees Isaac and Ishmael playing together she demands Ishmael leave. There is no way, she says, that he will stand to inherit anything. Abraham seems torn, but the Lord tells him to do what Sarah says. So Abraham gives Hagar some bread, a skin of water, and sends her on her way.
When the bread and water has run out, and she is at her wits end, she hides Ishmael in the bushes and walks a bows shot away. She cannot bear to watch her son die in the desert. But it is then, when she feels all hope is lost, that the Lord again appears to her. "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”
It is then she looks, and the Lord has opened her eyes. There is a well. The Lord has provided for both Hagar and her son. And the Lord continues to provide for them. For, indeed, God fulfills his promise to Hagar that from Ishmael would come a great nation.
God makes a promise to Abraham, but that does not preclude that God would also make a promise to Hagar. God watches over Isaac, but that does not mean God cannot be with Ishmael as well. God works great blessings over Israel, but that does not mean God cannot bless the nations. God is free. God makes promises, and God will hold to those promises. But the promises God makes, the ones we cling to, do not preclude other promises. Does not mean God does not work in other ways. God is free.
I say this because I know people who have worried about, say, family members who die without knowing Christ. Or wonder about those who die who had never heard the gospel. God makes sure and certain promises in Christ. We can reliably and dependably trust in him. Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. He is salvation. That is what is revealed to us, and we are called to walk in his paths. But the God Jesus reveals to us is the free God of Israel who is with Isaac and Ishmael. We do not know all that God does, or all the ways God works. We do not know exactly how that final judgment will go down. What we do know is that God is free, and in his freedom God is love. This is what is revealed in the Gospel. And we put our trust in him.