A great deal hung on the birth of this little boy. God had made covenant promises to Abram at Haran, Gen. 12. 1-3, which were repeated or expanded on at Shechem, 12. 7, at Bethel, 13. 14-17, at Hebron three times, 15. 1-21; 17. 1-21; 18. 10; and at Moriah, 22. 16-18 – seven times in all. Latent in this covenant was not merely an heir for Abraham. First the line must increasingly narrow from the fallen human family to the Semitic line, to the Abrahamic family, to the Isaaic heirship, to the Judaic tribe, to the Davidic royalty, and ultimately to the woman’s Seed. Then widening out into ever-increasing waves of blessing, from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth, the covenant-keeping God would bring to pass His promise that in Abraham all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
Our attention is at once arrested in Genesis chapter 21 by the poetic first verse: ‘And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken’. The birth of the son was in fulfilment of the prophetic word and a result of the direct intervention of God.
Verse 2 cannot help but remind us of Galatians chapter 4, verse 4, ‘But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law’. The birth of the son, seemingly late as far as man was concerned, was right on schedule by God’s reckoning.
Sarah, in joyful response to the birth of the son, asks the question, ‘Who would have said … ?’ No man would! Only God would conceive of Sarah conceiving. The apostle Paul asks a similar question, ‘For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?’, Rom. 11. 34. In other words, Where did the Lord get all of these wonderful ideas? Only God would have thought of such a plan; only God could have afforded such a cost and effected such a masterpiece.
There were two disparate responses to the birth of the son – the bondwoman’s seed mocked, but the father of the faithful held a feast. So it is today. Let the world mock if they dare defy God to His face. We will hold a feast each week to celebrate the Son of His love.
