Notes | July 11, 2021

Today's Message:  The Freshest Prince | Sean Patterson

We're in a message series called, the father complex. Stay caught up on this series by following the message series playlist on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrEv__Oj59Qfcq22h42-ERyJejpikgV4c

If fathers are distant, distracted, disconnected, or even abusive, children will believe all fathers are this way, even a heavenly Father who claims to love them unconditionally. 

“It took me all of 50 years to wipe the face of my father completely off the face of God.”  - William Paul Young

Is there anything that we can learn from the gospel that gives us insight on how to avoid the same fails that many godly men before us experienced?

Genesis 16:1-11
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” 6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. 

The reason why we will never see sustained peace in the world stems from the lowest moment of a man from whom so much of the world gets their spiritual roots. 

“Your slave is in your hands… Do with her whatever you think best.” (v. 6).  Or in other words, Hagar is still your slave, do whatever you want with her.

Genesis 21:15-18
15 “When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, ‘I cannot watch the boy die.’ And as she sat there, she began to sob.17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.’”

​Abraham's Fails

• Chooses himself over grace
• Births Ishmael
• Abandons Ishmael twice
• Almost loses his promised son

“Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Ishmael represented compromise and a lack of faith, but Isaac represented the idolatry of loving anything more than God. Both of them were destructive, and both of them required God’s intervention.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:12)

Abraham is not the hero of his story. God is. You are not the hero of your story. God is. This is the key to avoiding the pitfalls and fails in parenting that wrecks a generation.

Even with all of Abraham’s mistakes, God rescues and preserves the lives of both Ishmael and Isaac. God keeps His promise to bless the world through Abraham’s descendants.

God did not hear the cry of His boy, so that He through Jesus Christ could hear all of our cries. That makes Him both just and justifier of all who believe. It actually makes Him the Freshest Prince of all.