The Fruit of a Bad Idea Text: Genesis 16:15-16
Introduction: Two Ways to Build a House
There are two ways to build a house. One is to follow the architect's blueprint, trusting that he knew what he was doing when he drew it up. The other way is to get impatient with the process, decide the architect is taking too long, and start throwing up walls wherever it seems convenient. The first method results in a stable, habitable home. The second results in a complicated mess that is structurally unsound and will, in the end, bring a great deal of grief.
In the life of faith, we are presented with the same two options. God gives us His sure and certain promise, the blueprint for our lives and for redemptive history. And then He tells us to wait. But waiting is not something the flesh does well. The flesh wants to see results. The flesh wants to be in control. The flesh wants to "help God out," which is really just a pious way of saying that we think our own plan is better, or at least faster, and that God could use a little of our managerial assistance.
This is precisely where we find Abram and Sarai in this chapter. God had promised Abram a son, an heir, a seed through whom the whole world would be blessed. He made this promise in chapter 12. He reiterated it in chapter 15, sealing it with a blood covenant. But years have passed. Abram is old, and Sarai is barren. And so, Sarai, in a moment of what we might call pragmatic unbelief, comes up with a plan. It was a culturally acceptable plan, a legally recognized plan, but it was a plan born of the flesh. It was a plan to build the house of Abraham with the bricks of Egypt, using her handmaiden Hagar as a surrogate.
What we are reading in our short text today is the culmination of that plan. It is the tangible, crying, eight-pound result of a very bad idea. A son is born. A name is given. An age is recorded. It all seems very normal, very domestic. But beneath the surface, we are witnessing the formal establishment of a principle that will plague God's people for millennia. We are seeing the birth of the covenant of works, set up as a rival to the covenant of grace. This is not just a family squabble; it is a theological object lesson with global implications.
The Text
So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Now Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
(Genesis 16:15-16 LSB)
A Son of the Flesh (v. 15a)
We begin with the simple statement of fact:
"So Hagar bore Abram a son..." (Genesis 16:15a)
Sarai's plan worked. Let us not miss this point. Sinful plans often appear to succeed, at least for a season. Hagar conceives, carries the child to term, and delivers a healthy baby boy. From a purely biological and mechanical standpoint, the project was a success. If you set out to get a son by means of a surrogate, and a son is born, you have achieved your goal. This is why the allure of walking by sight is so powerful. It produces tangible results. It gives you something to hold, something to show for your efforts.
But this success was, in fact, a profound spiritual failure. This was not the son of the promise. This was the son of human striving. This was the son of impatience. This was the son of the flesh. The apostle Paul, commenting on this very story, makes this the central issue. In Galatians, he tells us that Abraham had two sons, "one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise" (Gal. 4:22-23).
This is the fundamental contrast that runs through all of Scripture. There are two religions in the world. One says, "I obey, therefore I am accepted." The other says, "I am accepted, therefore I obey." One is based on what I can produce for God. The other is based on what God has promised to me in Christ. Ishmael is the poster child for the first religion. He is the result of human ingenuity, human effort, and human timing. He is what happens when we decide that God's promise needs our performance to make it a reality. And the tragic irony is that this striving always produces bondage, not freedom. It produced strife in Abram's tent immediately, and it produces strife in our hearts today whenever we try to justify ourselves by our own efforts.
The Father's Acknowledgment (v. 15b)
Next, we see Abram's formal acceptance of this son.
"...and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael." (Genesis 16:15b LSB)
In the ancient world, naming a child was an act of acknowledging paternity and asserting authority. By naming the boy, Abram is officially declaring, "This one is mine. I accept him as my son and heir." He is taking ownership of the results of Sarai's plan. He went along with the scheme, and now he is ratifying the outcome.
But look at the name he gives him: Ishmael. This name was not his own invention. Back in verse 11, the angel of the Lord had appeared to the fleeing Hagar and told her, "Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has listened to your affliction." The name Ishmael means "God hears."
There is a world of mercy and judgment packed into this name. On the one hand, it is a testimony to God's grace. God did hear the cry of the afflicted slave girl, Hagar. He saw her, ministered to her, and made promises to her concerning her son. God is not the tribal deity of one family; His compassion extends to the outcast and the oppressed. He heard Hagar in her distress, and the boy's name would be a permanent memorial of that fact.
But on the other hand, the name is a subtle rebuke to Abram. Who was it that had failed to believe that God hears? It was Abram and Sarai. They had grown tired of waiting for God to hear their prayers for a son, and so they took matters into their own hands. Now, for the rest of his life, Abram will have a son whose very name is a reminder of God's faithfulness and his own failure to trust in it. Every time he called out, "Ishmael!" he was inadvertently preaching a sermon to himself: "God hears... even when you don't believe He does." This is how God works. He weaves our sins and follies into the tapestry of His providence in such a way that they end up testifying to His own character.
A Marker of Impatience (v. 16)
The final verse gives us a simple chronological note, but it is theologically significant.
"Now Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him." (Genesis 16:16 LSB)
Why does Moses, under the inspiration of the Spirit, include this detail? It serves as a crucial bookend to the story. God had called Abram out of Ur when he was seventy-five (Gen. 12:4). This means that eleven years have passed since the initial promise. Eleven years of waiting. Eleven years of looking at a barren wife and an empty nursery. And at the end of that eleven years, their faith faltered, and they implemented their fleshly solution.
But the story doesn't end here. We must read ahead. The very next verse, the beginning of chapter 17, says, "When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram..." There is a thirteen-year gap of silence between the birth of Ishmael and the next revelation from God. Abram spends thirteen years living with the fruit of his impatience, with Ishmael, the son of the flesh, as the heir apparent. For thirteen years, it looked like the plan had worked and God had accepted it.
This is a profound lesson for us. The consequences of our fleshly shortcuts are not always immediately apparent. There can be a long period where it seems that our clever plan, our compromise, our "little white lie," has worked out just fine. But God is not mocked. He is a God of timing. At eighty-six, Abram gets the son he can make. At one hundred, he will get the son only God can make, a son born from a dead womb, a son of laughter and resurrection life. The thirteen years of silence were a period of chastening, a time for Abram to learn that the Lord's promises are not fulfilled on man's timetable or by man's methods.
Conclusion: The Two Covenants in Your Heart
This story is not here simply to give us historical information about the patriarchs. As Paul makes clear in Galatians, Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac, represent two covenants, two ways of relating to God, two religions that are at war with one another. And that war is not just an external conflict; it is a battle that rages within the heart of every believer.
Every one of us has an inner Ishmael. We all have a natural inclination to justify ourselves through our own efforts. We want to build our own righteousness. We get impatient with God's grace and we try to "help Him out" with our own religious performance, our moral striving, our frantic activity. We think that if we can just produce enough for God, He will have to be pleased with us. This is the religion of the flesh, and it produces nothing but anxiety, pride, and ultimately, bondage. It is the covenant from Mount Sinai, which bears children for slavery (Gal. 4:24).
But God has given us a better covenant, the covenant of promise, represented by Isaac. Isaac's birth was a miracle. It was a resurrection. It was something only God could do. It was received by faith, not achieved by works. This is the gospel. We are not saved by what we produce for God, but by what Christ has produced for us and what God has promised to us in Him.
The central question for us, then, is this: which son are you trusting in? Are you trying to present your own Ishmael to God, the product of your own sweat and effort, hoping it will be good enough? Or are you resting in God's Isaac, the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Son given by grace? The flesh and the Spirit are at war. As Paul says, "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" (Gal. 4:29). Your inner Ishmael will always mock and persecute your trust in the Spirit. Your self-righteousness will always despise grace.
The command of the gospel is clear: "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" (Gal. 4:30). We must, by faith, continually crucify the flesh. We must cast out the Ishmael of self-reliance and cling to the Isaac of God's free promise in Jesus Christ. Abram learned this lesson over thirteen long years of silence. May God grant us the grace to learn it today.