God is a God who always keeps His promises. Throughout the Scriptures we read His promises to His people and as we follow through the story of the Bible we watch how those promises are always fulfilled.

One of the most documented promises in the Scripture is the promise that God gives to Abraham. God tells Abraham that he will become a great nation, that through his family a blessing will be released that will multiply through the generations. As we have explored through this blog before, this is great….. but humanly speaking it is very unlikely and that’s being kind. Abraham and his wife are old in years, well past childbearing years, and the fact that they didn’t have any kids of their own already makes it pretty much impossible.

Now when God’s promises seem unlikely and/or take longer than we had imagined to come to past what we often do as humans is find a way to fast forward what He has for us. That is what Abraham and Sarah do. They just can’t wrap their head around this promise so they come up with a plan to make it happen themselves. Sarah decides to give Abraham her servant, Hagar, to have a child with. It worked, and Hagar bore Ishmael. As soon as Hagar becomes pregnant Sarah gets annoyed and mistreats Hagar causing her to run away. While Hagar is out on the run she is visited by an angel from God. The angel talks to her and asks here where she is going, and Sarah explains why she is running away. Then this happens.

Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” Genesis 16:9-10 (NIV)

Hagar returns to Sarah and submits to her. It seems that even though Ishmael was conceived through a sinful way, God is still going to honour his promise that Abrahams descendants are going to multiply. God confirms this later to Abraham.

And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. Genesis 17:20 (NIV)

When Ishmael is about 13/14 Sarah finally gets pregnant and they have Isaac. Sarahs dislike of Hagar and Ishmael flares up again. This is what we read in Genesis 21.

The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

Sarah wants rid of her again but this time Abraham struggles with the call.

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.

But then God repeats his earlier promise regarding Ishmael

I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring. Genesis 21:8-13

This is incredible.

God is so honourable, so honest, so perfect in his love and compassion that He must honour His promise even if His promise ends up making it harder for his people in the future. In fact we read later in Genesis about Ishamel’s people after we are told of his death.

His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt, as you go toward Ashur. And they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them. Genesis 25:18 (NIV)

A promise is a promise in God’s eyes

God doesn’t rescind His promises even when we mess them up and cause Him difficulty. It would make more sense to me that God would take it back if we don’t keep up our side of the promise but if that was the case then when would we ever see His promise or His goodness?

I’m so thankful for God’s goodness, His steadfastness, and His faithfulness to His promises.