Latest / Reformed Thinking / The End of the Bottle and the Opening of the Eyes: Providence in the Wilderness (Genesis 21:15–21)

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The End of the Bottle and the Opening of the Eyes: Providence in the Wilderness (Genesis 21:15–21) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  I'm your host and we are back for another session.
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  If you're new here, this isn't your standard Sunday School
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  recap. We don't just skim the surface
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  and give you a nice little moral for the weak.
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  No, we try to go deeper. We take a stack of commentaries,
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  systematic theologies, all the historical research we can find,
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  and we really try to extract the essential insight.
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  We want the meat, not the milk, as they say, and today we are
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  tackling a text that is. It's uncomfortable.
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  It's pretty gritty. Oh, it is.
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  It's brutal. It is.
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  We're looking at Genesis 21, specifically the story of Hagar
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  and Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba.
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  And I want to set the stage for you, for the listener right
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  away. We are not sitting in a nice air
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  conditioned sanctuary here, not at all.
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  We're stepping into a furnace. That's the imagery the text
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  really demands. You have to picture this
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  suffocating, dry heat, the kind of heat that just cracks your
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  skin. And in the middle of all this,
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  you've got a single mother and her what teenage son?
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  Yeah, about that. And they've been effectively
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  evicted, and they're walking toward a slow, really agonizing
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  death by dehydration. It's a survival Horror Story, is
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  what it is. But our mission today isn't just
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  to look at the narrative arc. We want to analyze this through
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  the lens of Reformed theology, specifically looking at, say,
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  the Westminster Confession on Providence.
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  And we want to understand a fundamental dichotomy that's
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  presented in these verses. Right.
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  We're looking at the collision between human resources, which
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  the text symbolizes as the bottle, and on the other hand,
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  divine Providence or what it calls the well.
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  And the question we are really trying to answer for you today
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  is, I think, simple but also pretty terrifying.
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  What happens when the bottle runs dry?
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  Yeah. When your career, your health,
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  your own moral effort, when it hits absolute 0, where do you?
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  Look, and there's another distinction we have to make too.
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  We need to distinguish between God simply keeping you alive,
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  what we'd call common grace, and God actually saving your soul.
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  Because they are not the same thing.
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  Not at all that we often confuse them.
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  So let's get into the sources. We're pulling from Calvin's
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  commentaries, some interesting archaeological data, stuff on
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  ancient Near Eastern inheritance laws, and obviously the text
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  itself. But before we get to the, you
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  know, the crying of the desert. We have to rewind.
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  We have to rewind. They didn't just end up there by
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  accident. No, this was not a hiking trip
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  gone wrong. This was a forced eviction.
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  And to understand the eviction, you have to look at the first
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  half of Genesis 21. Context is king, always.
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  The chapter opens on a massive high point.
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  I mean the contrast between the beginning of the chapter and the
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  middle is just jarring. You start with the birth of
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  Isaac. The miracle baby.
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  And the text really emphasizes this.
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  It says God visited Sarah as he had said.
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  That phrase shows up twice. It's hammering home the point
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  that this birth is supernatural. It's the result of a divine
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  promise made 25 years earlier. Which stands in direct contrast,
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  of course, to the other son in the household, Ishmael.
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  Right. Ishmael is what, about 14 years
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  old at this point? And his origin story is
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  completely different. He wasn't born of a promise from
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  God, he was born of a human scheme.
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  A workaround? Totally a workaround.
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  Abraham and Sarah got impatient. They used Hagar, the Egyptian
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  servant as a surrogate and Ishmael was the result.
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  He represents the flesh human effort trying to accomplish
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  God's will. So you had these two boys under
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  one roof. One represents the spirit and
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  the promise, the other represents the flesh in human
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  scheming. I mean, it's a theological
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  powder keg just waiting for a spark.
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  And that spark happens at the weaning feast.
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  I think modern listeners, we just glaze over this.
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  We think, OK, the kids stop breastfeeding, so they had a
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  little party. But in the ancient world, this
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  was a massive life stage marker. It was huge.
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  You have to remember infant mortality rates back then were
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  just staggering. A child making it to the age of
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  weaning, which was usually around 3 years old.
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  That meant he had passed the first major hurdle of survival.
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  So this party meant he was likely to live to adulthood.
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  Exactly. So Abraham throws this great
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  feast. It's a celebration of life, of
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  God's faithfulness. But in the middle of the toasts
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  and the cheering, Sarah sees something.
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  Verse 9 says she saw the son of Hagar mocking.
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  This is where the sources get really interesting with the
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  language. The Hebrew word here is
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  metzechek. It's an intensive form of the
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  word for laughter. Which is ironic because Isaac's
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  name, Yitzhak, means laughter. It's a direct play on work
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  words. Isaac is laughter in the sense
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  of joy, but Ishmael is Isa Singh at Isaac.
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  He's laughing at him. But you know, the question is,
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  is it just teasing? Some translations say playing.
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  I was looking at the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old
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  Testament, and it actually adds the phrase Playing with Isaac,
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  which, you know, sounds pretty innocent, like Big Brother
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  stuff. That's the softer reading for
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  sure. But if you look at how the
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  Apostle Paul interprets this event in the New Testament in
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  Galatians 4, he doesn't call it playing, he calls it
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  persecution. He who was born according to the
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  flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit.
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  That is incredibly strong language for a teenager making
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  fun of a toddler. It is.
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  It suggests there was real malice involved and more than
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  that, there was a threat to the inheritance.
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  You have to try and get into Sarah's head here.
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  She sees this 14 year old boy. He's strong, he's capable, he's
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  the first born son. And by all cultural rights, he
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  should be the heir. Absolutely.
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  If you look at the Code of Hammurabi or the newsy tablets,
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  these ancient legal texts we've found the son of a slave woman
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  could absolutely inherit if the father acknowledged him as his
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  own. Which Abraham had.
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  He had Sarah looks at Ishmael mocking or maybe asserting his
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  dominance over little Isaac, and she has this moment of clarity.
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  She realized this isn't just a sibling squabble.
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  This is a rival. It's a battle for the estate, a
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  battle for the covenant promise. So she goes to Abraham and lays
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  down the law. Cast out this bondwoman and her
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  son, For the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with
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  my son. And notice she doesn't even use
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  their names. This bondwoman, the son of this
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  bondwoman, it's total dehumanization.
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  She wants them gone, erased from the family.
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  And this puts Abraham in an absolutely impossible position.
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  The text says the thing was very displeasing in his sight because
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  of his son. And I really appreciate that the
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  Bible doesn't paint Abraham as some stoic statue here.
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  He loves Ishmael. Of course he does.
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  He's been raising this boy for over a decade.
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  He probably taught him how to hunt, how to shepherd.
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  That is his first born, emotionally speaking.
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  And now Sarah's asking him to essentially sign a death warrant
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  for his own child. I mean, sending a woman and a
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  boy into the desert. In that era, the odds of
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  survival were slim to none. It feels incredibly cruel.
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  I think that's the hurdle for the modern reader.
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  We look at Sarah and we think she's just being vindictive.
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  We look at Abraham and see a weak man gave him to his wife,
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  right? But then God steps in and this
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  is the real shocker. God takes Sarah aside.
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  He does, he says. Do not let it be displeasing in
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  your sight. In all that Sarah has said to
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  you, listen to her voice. Why?
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  I mean, that's the big question. Why does God ratify what seems
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  like such a harsh eviction? This is the theological key to
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  the entire passage. It's the doctrine of separation.
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  God explains why, he says, For in Isaac your seed shall be
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  called. OK, let's unpack that phrase.
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  In Isaac your seed shall be called.
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  The covenant of grace. That's the line that leads to
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  Jesus Christ. It has to be kept pure.
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  It cannot be mixed with the line of human works, which is what
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  Ishmael represents. If Ishmael stays in the tent,
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  the inheritance gets muddied. The seed, the promise line is
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  compromised. So practically speaking, you
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  can't have your Plan B living in the same house as God's Plan A.
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  That's a great way to put it. It's a hard truth, but in the
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  economy of redemption, you cannot rely on the flesh and the
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  spirit at the same time. You can't hedge your bets.
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  The reliance on human effort which is Ishmael has to be cast
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  out for the reliance on divine promise, which is Isaac to stand
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  alone. That is a heavy application for
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  us. I mean, we all like to keep our
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  little Ishmael's around as backup plans.
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  You know, I trust God, but I'm also going to manipulate this
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  situation at work just in case God doesn't show up.
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  And God is saying no, cast it out.
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  It has to be total reliance. But, and this is so crucial for
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  our view of God's character, God doesn't just say kick him out
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  and leave it at that. Right, there's a counter
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  promise. Yes, he says.
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  Yet I will also make a nation of the son of the bondwoman,
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  because he is your seed. This is fascinating because it
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  introduces the distinction we're going to have to track through
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  this whole deep dive, the distinction between being the
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  seed, the messianic line. And being of the seed meaning
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  just physically descended from Abraham.
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  So Ishmael gets a blessing, he gets a promise of survival and
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  multiplication, but he doesn't get the covenant.
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  Exactly. He gets the overflow of
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  Abraham's blessing, but he does not get the birthright.
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  He gets common grace, not saving grace.
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  Which brings us to the morning of the departure, verse 14.
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  Abraham rises early in the morning.
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  He takes bread and a skin of water, and he puts it on Hagar's
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  shoulder. This moment is just
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  heartbreaking. He's not sending them out with a
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  caravan or a guide. He's not giving them a flock of
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  sheep or even a donkey. Nothing.
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  He gives them bread and a single skin of water.
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  A chemeth. A chemeth which is a cured
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  animal skin all stitched up to be watertight.
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  I want to pause on this object, the bottle, because it becomes
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  the central symbol of the whole crisis.
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  In the ancient world. This was technology.
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  This was a tool. It was human ingenuity at its
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  finest. A portable reservoir.
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  It's what allowed you to travel away from the river, away from
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  the Oasis. It gave you a measure of
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  independence. But here's the flaw in the
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  design. What is a bottle, fundamentally?
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  It's a closed system. A closed system, that's the key.
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  It can only hold what you put into it.
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  It has no source of its own. It's disconnected from the
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  spring. And because it's a closed
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  system, it's subject to the laws of, well, entropy.
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  Every time you take a drink, there's less than there was
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  before. And that leads us to the
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  inevitable tragedy of verse 15. And the water in the skin was
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  used up. The Hebrew word there is kala,
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  the devastating word. It means finished, consumed,
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  spent. It's actually the same root word
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  that's used back in Genesis 2.1, where the heavens and the earth
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  were finished. But in Genesis 2, finished means
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  completed, perfected. It's a good thing.
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  Here, it means the exact opposite.
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  It means exhaustion. It means there's nothing left.
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  It's important to note the bottle didn't leak, it wasn't
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  faulty, it was just consumed. It did its job and now it's
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  empty. I think this is where you, the
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  listener, really need to lean in.
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  Yeah, because we all carry bottles.
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  We do. We all do.
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  The bottle represents the sum total of human resources.
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  Your 4-O1K is a bottle. Your five year career plan is a
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  bottle. Your workout routine, Your diet,
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  Your vitamins. That's a bottle.
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  Your own morality, your good beads.
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  That's a big one. And we think if I can just fill
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  this bottle enough, if I get enough savings, enough
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  education, enough status, I'll be safe.
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  I can cross any wilderness. But the lesson of Beersheba is
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  it every single bottle is finite.
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  It does not matter how big it is.
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  It doesn't matter how well stitched it is.
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  You put enough heat on it. A market crash, a cancer
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  diagnosis, A layoff, or just a slow, steady grind of time.
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  And the water will be color. It will run out.
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  And when that bottle runs out, if that bottle is all you have,
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  you are in Hagar's position. You're wandering, The text says.
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  She wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
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  They lost their way. When the resource fails, the
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  direction usually fails right along with it.
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  Panic sets in. So let's layer the theology back
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  on top of this. If Hagar is a picture of the
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  covenant of works, the law, as Paul argues in Galatians, what
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  does this empty bottle tell us about legalism?
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  It's a really powerful critique. The law gives you a standard.
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  It puts a burden on your shoulder.
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  The text says Abraham put the bottle on her shoulder.
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  The law says here is the weight you must carry.
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  And the law demands hydration. It demands righteousness.
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  It demands perfect obedience. But does the law provide the
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  water to meet that demand? No, that's the catch.
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  The law demands water, but it cannot create it.
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  It can only store the limited supply of your own moral effort,
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  and eventually your moral effort runs dry.
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  You can't obey perfectly. You can't be good enough for
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  long enough. The bottle of works
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  righteousness always, always ends in death in the wilderness.
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  There's a critique in here, too, of what we might call the
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  prosperity gospel, the idea that if you just have enough faith or
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  speak the right words, your bottle will never run out.
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  That is such a cruel lie. The text shows us that the
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  bottle must fail. It's part of the design.
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  It has to The bottle didn't run out.
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  Hagar would never have needed the well.
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  God often allows our human resources to hit absolute zero
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  to be color precisely. So we stopped looking at the
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  leather skin and start looking for him.
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  So Hagar standing there. The skin is flat and empty.
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  The boy is fainting from thirst and she makes a decision that is
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  just the darkest moment in the whole text.
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  She cast the child under a shrub.
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  The verb cast there implies she basically dropped him.
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  She's weak, she can't carry him anymore.
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  She just shoves him under this scrubby little Bush, probably a
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  broom tree, which offers very little shade, and she walks
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  away. She goes a bow shot away.
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  The distance of despair. Why that specific measurement?
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  Why does the text bother to tell us it was a bow shot?
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  What's the significance? Well, think about what an Archer
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  does. He shoots an arrow at a target
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  he can't possibly reach with his own hand.
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  The bow shot represents that gap.
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  It's the gap between her problem, her dying son, and her
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  ability to do anything about it. She can't fix.
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  It can't fix it, so she pushes death away, just far enough so
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  she doesn't have to hear the rattle of his last breaths.
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  She says let me not see the death of the boy.
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  This is the position of the secular world when it faces the
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  the ultimate reality of death. When a secularist who relies
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  entirely on the bottle of science or medicine or money
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  finally reaches the end of that bottle, there's no answer.
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  All you can do is look away. Numb yourself.
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  Distract yourself. Hagar separates herself because
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  she cannot save him. She can't bear to watch.
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  So she sits down, and she lifts up her voice and weeps.
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  This is the end of the line for human resources.
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  The bottle is empty. The mother has quit.
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  The boy is dying. It is absolute 0.
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  And it is the necessary prerequisite for grace.
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  And this is the pivot point of the whole story.
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  Verse 17 changes everything and God heard, but the detail of who
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  he heard is so important. It is, the text says.
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  Hagar lifted up her voice and wept.
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  She's the one making all the noise, but it says God heard the
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  voice of the lad. That's a critical detail.
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  God's ear is tuned to the dying boy under the Bush, not
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  necessarily the loudest cry. And it connects right back to
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  his name, Ishmael. Ishmael.
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  It literally means God hears. So God is acting according to
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  his name. He's being true to his own
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  character. Exactly.
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  He is acting according to his nature.
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  God is immutable. He cannot deny himself.
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  He named that boy before he was even born.
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  And now, in this crisis, God proves that he is who he said He
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  is. So why does he hear the lad?
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  I mean, let's be honest, Ishmael is not the child of the promise.
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  He's the one who is mocking Isaac.
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  He's the son of the flesh. Why does God care about him?
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  This gets us right into the Westminster Confession, chapter
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  5 on Providence. God is the preserver of all
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  things. The Psalm says He feeds the
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  young Ravens when they cry. If God's Providence extends to a
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  baby bird, will he not listen to a dying boy?
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  So it's an act of general Providence, common grace.
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  It is general Providence, yes, but there's also a more specific
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  reason mentioned in the earlier chapters.
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  God hears him because of Abraham.
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  God had made a promise to Abraham that Ishmael would live
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  and become a nation. So God's faithfulness to the
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  covenant head to Abraham trickles down even to the
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  rebellious son. That is a fascinating
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  distinction. God hears believers because of
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  Christ, our covenant head. But here he hears Ishmael
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  because of Abraham and his own general benevolence.
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  And look at the geography of this hearing.
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  This is so powerful. The text says God has heard the
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  voice of the lad where he is. Where he is.
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  That is a geography of grace. Ishmael didn't have to crawl
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  back to Abraham's tent. He didn't have to get cleaned up
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  or perform some ritual. He didn't have to find a temple.
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  God hurt him in the dust under a Bush in the middle of nowhere.
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  That just busts the myth that we have to reach a certain level of
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  spiritual performance or get our act together before God will pay
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  any attention to. Us.
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  It completely destroys it. The God of the Bible meets us in
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  the wilderness. He meets us at the bottom right
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  where we are. So God hears that step one.
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  What happens next is a sequence that really lays out how Grace
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  operates. Yes, you can almost see it as a
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  sequence of salvation typologically.
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  First God hears, that's grace initiating.
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  Second, God speaks, that's the external call.
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  And 3rd God illuminates. That's the internal work of
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  regeneration or giving sight. Let's talk about the call.
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  The Angel of God calls to Hagar from heaven and says, arise,
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  lift up the lad. Now you have to think about that
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  command. Arise.
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  Hagar is dehydrated. She's depressed.
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  She's physically and emotionally exhausted.
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  She's given up to the flesh. This is an impossible command.
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  She can't arise. She has nothing left.
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  It's like Jesus telling the man with the withered hand, stretch
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  out your hand, he couldn't do it in his own power.
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  Exactly. But the command of God carries
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  within it the power to obey. When God says arise, he gives
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  the strength to arise and notice.
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  He grounds the command in a promise.
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  He doesn't just say get up, he says arise, for I will make him
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  a great nation. So the promise fuels the
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  obedience. Always.
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  That's the gospel pattern. We don't obey in order to earn
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  the promise. We obey because the promise is
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  already secure. God is telling her to look at
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  that dying boy under the Bush and see a future nation.
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  Faith is looking at the present distress through the lens of a
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  future. Promise And then comes the
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  miracle. Verse 19 Then God opened her
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  eyes, and she saw a well of water.
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  This is the pivot of the entire passage.
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  The Hebrew word for opened here is pakash.
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  It means to open senses that were previously sealed, like
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  opening the eyes of the blind or the ears of the deaf.
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  So let's get specific here. Did God create the well right
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  then and there? Like poof, a spring just appears
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  in the desert. The text doesn't say he created
• 18:19
  it, it says he opened her eyes. The strong implication, and many
• 18:23
  commentators agree on this, is that the well was likely there
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  the whole time. Wait a minute.
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  So she was dying of thirst, having given up all hope right
• 18:31
  next to a source of water she just could not see.
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  Precisely. The provision was present, but
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  the perception was absent. She was blinded by her grief, by
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  her tears, by her hopelessness, and by her focus on the empty
• 18:44
  bottle. That's the human condition in a
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  nutshell. It's First Corinthians 2.13.
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  The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,
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  for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because
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  they are spiritually discerned. We are born spiritually blind.
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  We are shaking our empty bottles, weeping in despair,
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  while the well of living Water is standing right next to us.
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  We don't need a new Bible. We don't need a new savior to
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  come down. No, we need Pakach.
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  We need our eyes open by the Holy Spirit to what is already
• 19:13
  there. We need the Spirit to show us
• 19:15
  the all sufficiency of Christ who is already revealed in the
• 19:17
  Scriptures. And once her eyes are open, look
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  what she does. She went and filled the skin
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  with water and gave the lad a drink.
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  Grace fuels activity. This is so important for a
• 19:27
  reformed understanding of faith and works.
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  Grace doesn't make you passive. God didn't just levitate the
• 19:33
  water into Ishmael's mouth. Hagar had to get up, walk to the
• 19:36
  well and do the physical work of filling the skin.
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  She used the bottle, the very same bottle that failed her.
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  She did. The very bottle that was the
• 19:45
  symbol of her failure is now useful again.
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  And why? Because now it's not the source,
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  it's just a vessel. That is a great distinction.
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  When the bottle is the source, it will kill you.
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  But when the bottle is a vessel connected to the well.
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  Then it sustains you. Your job, your money, your
• 20:00
  health. These are terrible gods.
• 20:02
  They are empty bottles. But if your eyes are open to the
• 20:05
  well and these things are seen as vessels connected to God's
• 20:08
  grace, they can be wonderful tools to serve your neighbor and
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  sustain your family. I want to zoom out a bit now.
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  We've been deep in the story, but there is some heavy theology
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  operating in the background here.
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  We mentioned the difference between Isaac and Ishmael
• 20:20
  earlier. Let's really clarify this
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  distinction between covenant and Providence.
• 20:24
  It's crucial that we hold 2 truths in tension here and not
• 20:28
  let one cancel out the other. Truth #1 covenant particularity.
• 20:32
  Salvation is through Isaac. The line of promise is narrow.
• 20:36
  It's specific. Not everyone is Isaac.
• 20:38
  Right election is real. It is, but Truth number 2 is
• 20:42
  divine benevolence. God cares for Ishmael.
• 20:45
  God saves Ishmael's life. God blesses him with a future.
• 20:49
  So holding those two truths means we have to reject 2 common
• 20:52
  extremes. Yes, on one side we have to
• 20:55
  reject a kind of hyper Calvinism that might say God hates the non
• 20:59
  elect and has no care or concern for them whatsoever.
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  It's just not true. The text clearly shows God
• 21:05
  hearing, speaking to, and providing for the son of the
• 21:08
  bondwoman. Now on the other side, what's
• 21:10
  the other? We have to reject universalism.
• 21:13
  Just because God rescues excuse Ishmael from thirst does not
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  mean Ishmael is in the covenant of grace in the same way that
• 21:18
  Isaac is. We must not confuse these
• 21:21
  temporal mercies, getting a job, surviving A sickness, having a
• 21:24
  happy family, with saving grace. That's a real trap for a lot of
• 21:27
  people. They think, well, my life is
• 21:29
  going great, God is blessing me, I must be right with him.
• 21:32
  But God is kind to the unthankful and the evil.
• 21:36
  He makes his sunrise on the just and the unjust.
• 21:38
  A full bottle or even a rescued life in the wilderness is not
• 21:42
  the same thing as having your sins is forgiven through the
• 21:45
  promised seed. This brings us to the ultimate
• 21:47
  point. We're a Christian show and we
• 21:50
  believe all the Scripture testifies of Christ.
• 21:53
  How do we see Jesus in this story?
• 21:55
  Because you know, usually we look at Isaac as the type of
• 21:58
  Christ the beloved Son offered up.
• 22:00
  And Isaac is certainly a type of Christ.
• 22:02
  But here's where the text gets really layered and interesting.
• 22:05
  There is a tale of two sons happening here.
• 22:07
  Look at Ishmael's profile for a moment.
• 22:09
  He's a son of Abraham. He's cast out into the
• 22:11
  wilderness. He bears a burden on his
• 22:13
  shoulder. He is thirsty.
• 22:14
  He is dying. That's sounds familiar.
• 22:17
  Hebrews 13 tells us that Jesus, the true son, suffered outside
• 22:21
  the gate. He was cast out.
• 22:23
  He entered the wilderness of judgement.
• 22:25
  But here's the difference. Ishmael was cast out for his own
• 22:29
  being, his own nature of the flesh.
• 22:32
  Jesus was cast out because he was bearing our flesh.
• 22:35
  He was bearing our sin. And the thirst, I mean, for me,
• 22:38
  that's the strongest connection. It's the most devastating
• 22:41
  contrast. In Genesis 21, the lad cries out
• 22:44
  in his thirst, and God provides a well of cool water.
• 22:48
  The Angel comes, eyes are open, life is preserved on the cross.
• 22:51
  In John 19, Jesus cries, I thirst and what happened?
• 22:55
  Silence from heaven and vinegar from men.
• 22:58
  No. Well, no Angel, no.
• 22:59
  No relief. Why?
• 23:00
  Why the difference? That is the great exchange.
• 23:03
  Why did God hear the Bondwoman's son but forsake his own beloved
• 23:07
  son? It's because on that cross,
• 23:09
  Jesus was drinking the cup of God's wrath dry.
• 23:11
  He was experiencing the ultimate kala.
• 23:13
  He was being used up and finished so that we could be
• 23:16
  replenished forever. He took the dryness of the
• 23:18
  desert of judgment so that we could have the river of life.
• 23:21
  He was forsaken in the wilderness so we could be found
• 23:24
  in the garden. Because he cried, I thirst and
• 23:27
  receive nothing but wrath. We can now hear His invitation
• 23:31
  in John 7. If anyone thirsts, let him come
• 23:34
  to me and drink. The well is open for us because
• 23:37
  the rock was struck for him. Beautifully put, yes.
• 23:40
  So as we wrap up this deep dive, let's bring it right back to
• 23:43
  you, the listener. Maybe you're listening to this
• 23:45
  and you're holding a bottle. Your career, your morality, your
• 23:50
  self deficiency. And maybe you're shaking it and
• 23:53
  you realize it's getting light, it's getting empty.
• 23:57
  Or maybe it's already empty. Maybe you're at that bow shot
• 23:59
  distance. You've given up.
• 24:00
  You're just sitting in the silence, waiting for the end of
• 24:02
  something. The warning of this text is
• 24:04
  clear. Every bottle eventually runs
• 24:06
  dry. If you rely on your own
• 24:08
  resources, you will end up under the shrub in the wilderness.
• 24:11
  It's an inevitability. But the invitation is equally
• 24:14
  clear. You don't have to die of thirst.
• 24:16
  The well is already here. It was here the whole time.
• 24:18
  In repentance and the logic of this story isn't about beating
• 24:21
  yourself up or trying harder to fill your bottle.
• 24:24
  It's about turning. It's about turning your eyes
• 24:27
  away from the dry, cracked skin of your own efforts and looking
• 24:31
  at the all sufficient Savior. Drop the bottle, you don't need
• 24:34
  it to be your source anymore. Drink from the well that never
• 24:37
  runs dry. And don't go back to the
• 24:39
  wilderness as an orphan. Ishmael went on to live in the
• 24:42
  wilderness, but the text says God was with the lad.
• 24:46
  He lived there knowing the God who hears.
• 24:48
  So go as a child of the promise, not as an orphan.
• 24:51
  Go knowing that God hears, God sees, and God provides.
• 24:55
  Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into Genesis
• 24:58
  21. It's a hard text, but it is a
• 25:00
  text full of living water if you have the eyes to see it.
• 25:03
  Indeed, until next time, keep thinking.
• 25:06
  And keep drinking from the well. Goodbye.