Genesis 16 is our consideration today.

Limited by my essential lack of world languages, I believe that the Yoruba have the most discreptive concept of God who’s all hearing. They describe him as abeti kara bi ajere – He that is all ears round like ajere. Ajere is a metal basket with millions of see-through holes. This is an equivalent of the Hebrew word of El-Shaddai which means the all breasted One.

 

Abram was called by God long time ago. He finally obeyed God fully about ten years ago. He wasn’t promised a land only but a son as well. These two constituted the purpose of existence to the people of that age; this was the light, the civilisation of the period by which man lived and received dose of happiness. About ten years after, there wasn’t any any son coming from the eighty-five years old man, Abram, and his seventy-five years old wife, Sarai. Although before now, according to history, men were fathering children at over hundred and more. But that age had passed. Sarai, barren or, in modern term, sterile, decided to flow with the mesopotamian culture of becoming a mother by giving Hagar, her Egyptian maid, to Abram, her husband. Abram conceded and Hagar conceived. Just then, Hagar realised how more important she was with Abram than her mistress. Sensitive Sarai reacted by afflicting her, dealing hard with her. And the maid fled from home. It’s on this path that the angel of the Lord appeared to her and, uttering some prophecies, told the fleeing woman to return home and learn to respect and obey her mistress.

The angel of the Lord, this is regarded by many as theophany of the Lord Jesus – told her: …. Behold, thou art with child, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. Then the angel gave the future wild and wilderness nature of the coming son who, because of Abram, was also blessed. The name Ishmael means God hears or God will hear.

God will hear! My usual reaction, reading through this passage has always been, Why didn’t God intervene and not allow Hagar to conceive Ishmael? It’s of no use to allow a soul on planet earth who will not flow in the full spiritual blessing of oneness with God as another son who was by promise: Issac. Then I hear purpose and grace.  …who has saved us and called us to holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time (2 Timothy:1:9-10). The process of redemption was in the offing and this move of Abram through the flesh was also blended by God into it. There’s a purpose why God didn’t even physically intervened; there’s the grace of God to also intervene after the conception of the son.

Later, Isaac would be born by Sarai into the same household of Abram thirteen years late when Ishmael was becoming a man of the house. And there began the display of his wild nature in conflicting against all others; the manifestation of human nature of selfishness.

Ishmael, represents all mankind – flesh. But there’s the other son, Isaac meaning laughter – spiritual. The highest righteousness man can attain, the law, cannot fulfill the righteousness of God.. It’s only through the promised One, Jesus Christ adumbrated in Isaac, by which the righteousness of God can be obtained. If there’s any law or principle by which man can attain righteousness, the law of Moses is it, but it’s still impossible because of his flesh, the sinful nature. He simply cannot cannot come to divine justification because the law is spiritual and he, carnal, is sold over to sin nature. His (Abraham’s) son (Ishmael) by the slave woman (Hagar) was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman (Sarah) was born as a result of a promise (Galatians 4:23).  Everyone is born in the ordinary (natural) way and, now, everyone can be reborn as a result of a promise. Everyone born as flesh is fleshy and now everyone can be born into the spirit, from heaven, spiritual. This is called Born Again. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring (Romans 9:8).

Now, God desires that all mankind born by the ordinary way – including the descendants of Sarai and Abram, represented in Ishmael – will be reborn from heaven (the second birth), being the son of the promise: Jesus Christ.

When men run the world according to their different civilisations, even in the days of Abram, God was hidden. He was restricted in His dealing with few people on the earth – here a family. He is now no more hidden. In the past God overlooked such ignorance about Himself common to humanity, but now he commands wants) all people everywhere to repent (1 Corinthians 18:30), and be reborn. This is the step to the process of being born from heaven, being born again – the rebirth!

This is the meaning of Ishmael! It’s about a prophecy given long time ago that God does hear, nay, God will hear! Every man that calls upon Him through His son Jesus Christ is heard by Him. This doesn’t exclude any person, any race or any nation – it’s God will hear. It doesn’t exclude worshipers of other deities who acknowledge Him, claim His Lordship and turn about to Him. This is not another religion. It’s Ishmael, God hears. It doesn’t exclude Ishmael; it includes Israel. Can you see the difference? Israel means the Prince of or with God. It’s him Who will hear Ishmael that makes Israel, the prince with God

The Oba abeti kara bi ajere will hear, hears all through His once promised but now manifested Son.

Father, thank You for the promised Saviour-Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You Father for sending Him to us so that through Him You hear, You are hearing and will hear us always as often as we call, as often as we acknowledge You, as often as we live, move and have our being in You.

 

Thank You Lord for this