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What Hagar Couldn't See in the Desert | The God Who Hears · Faith at Work

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  Two minutes ago,
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  we did something this congregation has done for generations.
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  SPEAKER_00: For decades, two families stood up here and they made promises.
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  SPEAKER_00: They promised to raise their children to know God.
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  SPEAKER_00: They promised to love them,
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  SPEAKER_00: to protect them,
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  to do everything within their power to give them a good and a
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  faithful life.
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  And I want us to just hold on to that beautiful picture because
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  I don't think that
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  SPEAKER_00: those promises were just sentimental.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that they were fierce.
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  SPEAKER_00: And many of us know as parents what I mean.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is almost nothing that a parent will do for a child.
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  SPEAKER_00: We will go without sleep.
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  SPEAKER_00: We will go without money.
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  We will lie awake rehearsing every single danger the world
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  might hold and try to
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  SPEAKER_00: figure out how to stand between our child and those dangers.
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  SPEAKER_00: The love runs deep.
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  SPEAKER_00: The love runs hard and it will spin itself completely.
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  But there is a question I want us to sit with this morning on a
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  day where we are
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  SPEAKER_00: celebrating exactly that kind of fierce parental love.
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  SPEAKER_00: What happens when a parent's love, as real as it is, reaches its limit?
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  SPEAKER_00: because it does reach a limit.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are finite.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our resources, they run out.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our wisdom runs out.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, God forgive us, our courage runs out.
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  SPEAKER_00: What then?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well,
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  the story that we just heard from Genesis 21 walks straight
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  into that question and
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  SPEAKER_00: it does not flinch.
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  Let me set the scene for all of us because this is not a tidy
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  story and I'm not
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  SPEAKER_00: going to pretend that it is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Abraham has two sons.
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  SPEAKER_00: One
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  SPEAKER_00: Isaac is the child of Sarah,
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  SPEAKER_00: the child of the long-awaited promise,
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  the baby everyone laughed about because Abraham and Sarah were
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  far too old to have
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  SPEAKER_00: children.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other Ishmael is the child of Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two women, two children,
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  one father in the flesh and that father is Abraham and the
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  household cannot hold
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  both of them within it at the celebration of Isaac's weaning
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  Sarah looks at Ishmael
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  and decides he is a threat to her son's inheritance she tells
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  Abraham to cast
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  them out the slave woman and the boy and just send them away
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  into the desert the
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  text tells us that this was deeply disturbing to Abraham and of
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  course it was
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  Ishmael was his son as well and Abraham is caught between two
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  children and he
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  SPEAKER_00: cannot protect them both
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  So early one morning he gets up and he hands Hagar some bread
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  and a skin of water
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  SPEAKER_00: and sends them out into the wilderness of Beersheba.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want us to be honest about that this morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially today,
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  especially on a day when we have just promised to protect all
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  of our children.
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  Here is the great patriarch of our faith and his protection for
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  one child fails.
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  Runs out at the edge of a desert with a loaf of bread and a
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  skin of water.
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  SPEAKER_00: The love was probably real.
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  SPEAKER_00: The protection
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  SPEAKER_00: It was not.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was not enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then, frankly, it gets worse.
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  SPEAKER_00: Out in the desert, the earthly father's water runs out.
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  And Hagar does the thing that I think is the most human and the
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  most heartbreaking
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  SPEAKER_00: moment in this whole story.
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  SPEAKER_00: She cannot watch her son die.
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  SPEAKER_00: So she lays him down in the shade under a bush and she walks away.
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  SPEAKER_00: The distance of a bow shot, the story tells us.
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  And she sits down and she says,
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  do not let me look on the death of the child.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she lifts up her voice and she weeps.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is the limit of a parent's love.
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  Not because she loved him too little but because she loved him
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  too much that she
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  SPEAKER_00: could not bear to watch what was about to happen.
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  She had given him everything she had and everything she had had
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  run out and there
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  SPEAKER_00: was nothing left in her hands but grief.
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  If the story ended there it would be an honest picture of how
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  the world breaks the
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  SPEAKER_00: people we love and breaks our ability to save them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And frankly it would be very depressing on a day like this.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the story doesn't end there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is what happens next.
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  SPEAKER_00: God heard the voice of the boy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hold on to that.
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  I need you to feel the weight of that line the mother has given
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  up the father is
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  miles away the water is gone the child is lying under a bush in
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  the desert about to
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  die and the narrator says God heard the boy the angel of God
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  calls out of heaven
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  SPEAKER_00: and says to Hagar what troubles you Hagar
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  SPEAKER_00: Do not be afraid for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Where he is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not where he should be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not in Abraham's household.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not in the covenant line.
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  Not in any of the places that the religious imagination of that
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  time or really our
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  SPEAKER_00: time would have expected God to be paying attention to.
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  God heard him right where he was cast out dying forgotten by
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  everyone and then God
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  opens Hagar's eyes and she sees a well that apparently had been
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  there the whole
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  time and she fills the skin and gives the boy a drink and then
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  the text says God
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  SPEAKER_00: was with the boy
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  SPEAKER_00: all the rest of his life.
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  Here's the point,
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  and it is the bedrock of everything else I want to say today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Parents, you will do almost anything for your children.
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  SPEAKER_00: God will do more.
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  When the parent's love reaches its limit God's love is just
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  getting started.
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  Where the mother walked away because she could not bear to
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  watch God walked toward
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  SPEAKER_00: the child because God could not bear to leave.
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  This is the deep theology underneath what we did up front here
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  this morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: When those parents,
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  SPEAKER_00: when y'all promised to protect and to provide,
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  SPEAKER_00: you were not promising to be God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let that sink in because it's important for us as parents.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were promising to point towards God.
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  They were saying in effect we will love this child with
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  everything we have and we
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  SPEAKER_00: already know that that will not be enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we are entrusting this child to the one whose love does not run out.
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  SPEAKER_00: And God always shows up.
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  and notice how God shows up in this story it's not with a
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  lecture it's not with
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  some sort of theological argument or idea God hears a cry and
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  provides water that's
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  SPEAKER_00: it
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  SPEAKER_00: Walter Brueggemann would call this the God of the dispossessed.
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  SPEAKER_00: The God who shows up precisely at the place of abandonment.
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  SPEAKER_00: I would simply say it is the most relational thing in the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: A child cries and God hears and God comes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a transaction.
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  SPEAKER_00: that is a heavenly father.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is one more detail you cannot miss in this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The boy's name is Ishmael and Ishmael means God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: The promise was sewn into his name before he was ever born.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every time anyone said his name out loud
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  SPEAKER_00: They were preaching the gospel without even knowing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now,
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to make a little bit of a turn because this story isn't just,
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  SPEAKER_00: of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: about Hagar and Ishmael and Abraham.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The whole drama of Genesis hangs on the question of children
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  SPEAKER_00: Who is the true heir?
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  SPEAKER_00: Who carries the promise?
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  SPEAKER_00: Whose line does God bless?
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  And the surface answer is Isaac,
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  the child of Sarah,
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  the child of the promise.
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  That is the line that runs to Jacob,
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  to Israel,
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  to David and to the baby born in Bethlehem.
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  But here's what the New Testament does with all of this and it
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  is one of the most
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  SPEAKER_00: generous moves of all of Scripture.
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  Paul takes the whole question of whose children are we and
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  blows the doors off of it.
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  In Galatians he writes that the real children of Abraham are
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  not defined by blood at all.
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  If you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's offspring heirs
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  according to the promise.
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  heirs you not because of your bloodline not because you were
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  born inside the right
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  family because you belong to Christ and it goes further than
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  that in Romans Paul
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  says that all who are led by the spirit of God are children of
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  God that we have
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  received a spirit of adoption by which we cry out to God the
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  way small children cry
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  SPEAKER_00: out to a parent
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  Ishmael God hears and John John puts it plainly as it can be
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  put see what the love
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  of the father has given us that we should be called children of
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  God and that is
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  SPEAKER_00: what we are church that's the whole of it that is what we
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  SPEAKER_00: dedicated those children this morning to whether we knew it or not.
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  SPEAKER_00: We did not promise to have all of the answers.
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  SPEAKER_00: You won't have all the answers.
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  SPEAKER_00: You probably already know that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Certainly many of your family members know that as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: We promised to be steady though.
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  SPEAKER_00: to be a trusted presence in their lives.
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  We promise to keep pointing to a faith that is big enough to
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  hold their whole lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: To the parents who stood up here this morning, your love is fierce.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's good.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's great even.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I'm afraid to tell you it's just not going to be enough sometimes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was never supposed to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Your job is not to be God for your child.
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  Your job is to keep handing your child back to the God who
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  hears them where they are.
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  SPEAKER_00: The God who goes farther than you can go.
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  The God who is already out in every wilderness your child will
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  ever wander into and
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  SPEAKER_00: is wading with water.
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  and to all of us because every one of us is somebody's child
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  and every one of us
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  has been out under a bush in the desert at some point in our
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  lives hear the good
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  news of Genesis 21 God heard the voice of the boy where he was
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  and God will hear
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  SPEAKER_00: you wherever you are as well you are not outside of the family
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  SPEAKER_00: There is no wilderness far enough to put you out there.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are a child of God and that is what you are.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: God hears.
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  SPEAKER_00: Amen.