A woman asked her doctor after he had examined her: “Do I have Asiatic flu?” “No,” the doctor replied, “It’s Egyptian flu.” The woman replied, “I’ve never heard of Egyptian flu, what’s that?” He replied: “You’re going to be a mummy.”
Our passage begins with Sarah conceiving and becoming a mummy. But, as will become clear from our consideration of this passage, no Israelite would have made a joke about this being Egyptian flu. Indeed, today I am going to call on you to choose between God and Egypt. I will be urging you to give up your Egyptian option. I am not talking about modern Egypt or modern Egyptians, but of what Egypt meant for the original readers of this passage. It is that Egyptian option I urge you to give up.
The Egyptian Entanglement
A woman asked, “Should I have a baby after 40?” “No!” she was told, “40 children is enough!” Should Sarah have a baby after 90? No! Well, humanly speaking. But that’s what happened, as we learn from verse 1: “And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.” This is the Lord’s second visit. The first visit is recorded in Genesis 18 when God visited as a human-looking angel and promised Sarah that he would return at the appointed time the following year when Sarah would have a son. That time has now come. But this time there is no physical appearance of God. Paul speaks of this in Galatians 4:29: “At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit.” Genesis 21 does not explicitly speak of Isaac being born by the power of the Spirit, but, as Paul recognizes,when God visited Sarah, he came to her in the Spirit.
God keeps his promises. He said he would do this and he did. That’s why Abraham and Sarah needed to learn to give up their Egyptian option. You too must give up your Egyptian option!
In Genesis 12 Abram obediently traveled to Canaan, the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants as their inheritance. If Abraham had expected he would possess a rich, fertile land he is sorely disappointed. He is not long in the land and there is a famine. What does Abraham do? He decides to go to Egypt - prosperous, fertile, Egypt. There Abraham accumulates considerable wealth, but the Pharaoh, thinking Sarah is Abraham’s sister, makes moves to add her to his harem of sexual partners, until God intervenes. The Egyptian option is so enticing yet so very deadly, threatening to rob Abraham and Sarah of God’s far richer blessings. In the same way the pleasures and security this world has to offer threaten to hold you back from looking to the Lord alone to fulfil his wonderful purposes for your life.
In Genesis 13, Abram, having been extricated from Egypt and now back in Canaan, finds “the land could not support” both him and Lot. Lot, you will remember, chooses a part of Canaan which we are told “was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt” (v10). Did you get that? “Like the land of Egypt.” What happens to Lot when he hankers after Egypt? Unmitigated disaster. Egypt seems to have so much more to offer than God, but to choose Egypt rather than God is to choose catastrophe.
As Cross-Cultural Ministry Coordinator for the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales I look at the tremendous gospel opportunities in South-West Sydney, a highly multicultural area, though typically populated by those from a lower socio-economic background. While I will not point the finger at particular individuals, I groan that so many trained gospel workers choose the Egyptian option. So many choose to minister in more affluent, middle to upper class suburbs, at least partly because of their concerns for their children, rather than being open for God to lead them to minister in a possibly more difficult environment.
When I was in Pakistan I arranged for a local Christian leader, to go and get Bible training from London Bible College. A number of people told me this was not a good idea. “He will get a taste for life in the West”, they told me. “He won’t come back.” They were expecting him to choose the Egyptian option. But he didn’t. In faithfulness to God he came back and devoted himself to minister to his own people in trying circumstances.
Now we come to Hagar. Listen to how she is described in Genesis 21:9:
But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac” (ESV).
Notice that Hagar is “the Egyptian.” At the end of this passage, in verse 21, we read: “While [Ishmael] was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.” That’s what Hagar and Ishmael represent – Egypt. Hagar the Egyptian must be cast out. You must get rid of the Egyptian option.
The first and primary readers of this passage were Israelites who had experienced the Exodus from Egypt and the years of wandering in the desert under Moses. When Jacob’s family first went to Egypt, after the preparations made by Joseph, they enjoyed great prosperity. But only fleeting pleasures are to be found in Egypt. There is no long-term future for God’s people in Egypt. Inevitably, the time came when a new Pharaoh threatened to kill every male child born to an Israelite and thereby bring an end to the nation of Israel. During all those years they were led by Moses in desert regions they repeatedly expressed their desire to go back to Egypt. Just to take one example, consider Exodus 16:3 where we read:
In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
For those Israelites who have experienced the Exodus and the desert wanderings Genesis 21 serves as a exhortation to get rid of the Egyptian option. There is no going back to Egypt. “I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.” Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:62).
By the way, those Israelites had no problem with the fact Hagar was a slave woman, for slavery was an accepted practice all over the ancient world, no matter what you and I think of it today. Nor did they have any problem with Sarah encouraging her husband to sleep with Hagar and have a child by her, given Sarah’s own barrenness. This too was a well-accepted cultural practice, paralleled perhaps by the increasing cultural acceptance in our own world of surrogate mothers, who carry another woman’s child in their wombs. No! For them Abraham and Sarah’s folly was that instead of trusting fully in God’s promise, they looked to Egypt to solve their problems, in this case an Egyptian woman, who like the land of Egypt, was similarly fertile and found it easy to give birth to a son for Abraham.
When Ishmael became Abraham’s son this became a snare for Abraham. In Genesis 17:15-16 God promises Abraham that he will give Abraham a son by Sarah. How does Abraham respond? We are told in verse 17: “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Then, clearly thinking that this is absurd, Abraham says to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” Abraham makes it clear that he would rather go for the Egyptian option than trust God to enable his ageing wife to do the seemingly impossible – give birth to a child. We see how hard it is for Abraham to let go of the Egyptian option in 21:11, where we are told that the idea of casting out Hagar and Ishmael deeply distressed Abraham. Why? Because he loved Ishmael, his son. But God is preparing Abraham for what will happen in the very next chapter, when, with Ishmael out of the picture, God will ask him to sacrifice Isaac as now “his only son”, whom he loves. Abraham must learn that he must depend on God to the nth degree to fulfil his purposes through Isaac. There is no back-up plan, no Egyptian option.
In this story, then, Hagar and Ishmael represent the entanglements and dangers that are involved in taking the Egyptian option rather than trusting in God. In Galatians 4 Paul parallels these two options with the two options that face every Christian:
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise (vv21-23; ESV).
Do you get the two options? One option is to live “under the law”, as though we were still slaves; to live our Christian lives as if the only way to please God and be sure of entering paradise is by relying on what we can do to impress him. This is living “according to the flesh”, that is, “according to our sinful nature.” This is the crazy Egyptian option that you and I choose repeatedly. It’s sheer madness. How can you please God if you depend on what your sinful nature can do to impress him?
Option #2 is to fully trust in God’s promise; counting on the fact that all that needed to be done for us to be right with God was achieved by Jesus on the cross; that we are redeemed, free to enjoy all the privileges of being God’s sons and daughters. As we live our Christian lives on this basis we live “according to the Spirit”. This is sanity, trusting in God’s promise that he himself, through the Spirit, will make us the kind of people he wants us to be.
The Egyptian Expelled
In Galatians 4:28-30 here is what Paul urges:
Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.”
Here Paul is helping us to read Genesis 21 correctly. Look at Genesis 21:8-11:
And the child [Isaac] grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”
Many who comment on this passage see Hagar as the victim of injustice, especially given the fact that she and Ishmael were sent packing with just some food and water to wander in the desert, where they nearly died of thirst. It is normal these days for Sarah to be castigated as a vicious bitch for the treating Hagar in such a mean-spirited and ruthless way.
Whoa! This is not how Paul read this passage. He says, clearly reflecting on what Sarah saw Ishmael doing during the feast: “he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit.” But where did Paul get such an idea, you might ask? All that Genesis 21:9 says is that Sarah saw Ishmael laughing. Indeed, there are those who believe Ishmael was just having innocent fun with Isaac and Sarah took exception to this.
Go back to Genesis 16:4: “And [Abraham] went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress [Sarah].” After Hagar knew she was pregnant she despised Sarah; she loathed her and expressed her hatred for Sarah through her words and actions. In ancient culture a woman unable to give birth to children often experienced great shame. Think of Hannah’s misery as described in 1 Samuel 1 and how she was taunted by Elkanah’s second wife, Peninnah after Peninnah started to have children, while Hannah remained barren. Get the point here. The venom, the hostility comes from Hannah and Sarah’s harsh treatment of Hagar, which resulted in Hagar fleeing until God sent her back, was Sarah’s reaction to Hagar’s malicious behaviour. But what you must see is the hostility, the malice originates with Hagar, not Sarah.
In Genesis 21, what Sarah sees as she watches Ishmael with Isaac is more of the same – not innocent laughter, but malicious, mocking laughter. She sees, to use Paul’s words, the son born according to the flesh persecuting the son born according to the Spirit. At the time of this incident Ishmael is about 15-16 years of age and Isaac is only a 1-2 year old toddler. Yet here is a teenager maliciously laughing at a toddler. Hagar’s poison has spread to Ishmael. There is something very evil and sinister in what happens here and when we realize this we can readily understand Sarah’s fears for Isaac’s safety and the reasons for her extreme response. Any responsible mother who feared for the safety of her child can understand this.
Thomas Carlyle said, “How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man.” Ishmael’s laughter is the cipher-key which enables us to decipher his character, a character like that of his mother – a malicious, hostile nature. Back in Genesis 16, when God told Hagar to go back to Sarah he said to her, “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” It is this hostility that we see in the way Ishmael laughs at Isaac with derision on the day that Isaac is weaned.
The name Isaac, commanded by God, means “laughter.” It registers the way Abraham responded when God promised him that he would certainly give him a son by Sarah. We read in Genesis 17:17: “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’” Genesis 18 similarly shows how Sarah also laughed at this idea. So the very naming of their son as Isaac serves to remind Abraham and Sarah how they had doubted God. We think of Abraham as a great example of faith – and he is. But the Genesis narrative shows us that Abraham and Sarah struggled with great doubts, only learning through difficult and trying circumstances, to depend on God alone. So if you are struggling with doubts you are in good company.
In 2 Corinthians 5:6 we learn, “We live by faith, not by sight.” The faith of Abraham and Sarah told them to trust in God’s promise, but when they tried to do this life seemed so hard. The land of Canaan was a harsh, barren land. Their sight told them to look to Egypt. Egypt always seemed so lush, so well-watered, so prosperous. Experience cried out to Abraham and Sarah to depend on that which was associated with Egypt – it always seemed to flourish, to produce fruit. This is true of the land. It also seemed to be true when it came to producing children. Hagar the Egyptian is fecund, fertile, easily producing a son for Abraham. Sarah is barren, seemingly incapable of giving birth to a child, with her advancing age making such a prospect ludicrous, absurd. What Abraham and Sarah need to learn is to give up the Egyptian option. That’s what the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael is all about.
What is the Egyptian option in your life? Is your marriage going through a hard time or are you finding it hard to remain single? It doesn’t take to much imagination to work out what your Egyptian option might be in these circumstances. Perhaps church seems boring and you feel there are other things you could be doing with your time which would be more enjoyable. We could go on. Where do you look for refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure?
Have you given up the Egyptian option in your life?

