America is known as the land of the free and the home of the brave. When we think of America we think of the concepts of liberty and freedom. These values are fundamental to our nation. Our desire for freedom is so great that Patrick Henry word’s “Give me liberty or give me death” still ring in our ears. Freedom is a big thing in America but it’s even a bigger thing in God. Jesus told us plainly, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (Jn. 8:32).’

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What Is the Feast of Jubilee?

Leviticus 25:8-10 (NCV)
8 “‘Count off seven groups of seven years, or forty-nine years. During that time there will be seven years of rest for the land. 9 On the Day of Cleansing, you must blow the horn of a male sheep; this will be on the tenth day of the seventh month. You must blow the horn through the whole country. 10 Make the fiftieth year a special year, and announce freedom for all the people living in your country. This time will be called Jubilee. You will each go back to your own property, each to your own family and family group.

• Jubilee occurred once every 50 years.
• Just as the sabbatical year occurred every seven years, the jubilee year occurred after seven sabbatical years.
• During this time,
  • All who were bound by debt were released.
  • All Jewish slaves regained their freedom.
  • All who had lost possessions had them restored.
• An Israelite’s land, which may have changed hands in order to cover debt, reverted back to its former owners.
• God meant to keep Israel free. Free not only from outside forces but also free from inside forces which came from the imperfections of men by way of the curse of the Fall.
• God desired for Israel to experience freedom inside and out.
• The Year of Jubilee represented just that, freedom and release.
• One of the oddities of freedom is the well-known thought, ‘freedom is never really free’. It always costs something to obtain freedom.
• And once you have it, there comes responsibility with it.
• The responsibility of making the determination to remain free once you have been set free.
• How do you purpose to remain free the way God wants you to?
• You make the determination by making the commitment to solve the problem which got you bound in the first place.
• What is it which pulled you down into despair?
• It’s one thing to be free. It’s another thing to stay that way.

[Tweet “God desired Israel to experience freedom inside and out. The Year of Jubilee represented just that.”]

Getting Rid Of ‘Ishy’: The Story of Ishmael

Genesis 12:1-4 (NCV)
1 The LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land I will show you. 2 I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and I will place a curse on those who harm you. And all the people on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram left Haran as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. At this time Abram was 75 years old.

• Why is it that sometimes people aren’t free?
• It’s because of Ishy.
• In this Genesis passage, Abram was seventy-five years old with no children.
• God’s promise to Abram was to make out of his loins a great nation.
• In order to have a great nation, you have to have seed. You have to have descendants. You have to have children. It’s a problem for Abram. But not for God.

The Promise to Abraham Established by Covenant

Genesis 15:1-4 (NCV)
1 After these things happened, the LORD spoke his word to Abram in a vision: “Abram, don’t be afraid. I will defend you, and I will give you a great reward.” 2 But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what can you give me? I have no son, so my slave Eliezer from Damascus will get everything I own after I die.” 3 Abram said, “Look, you have given me no son, so a slave born in my house will inherit everything I have.” 4 Then the LORD spoke his word to Abram: “He will not be the one to inherit what you have. You will have a son of your own who will inherit what you have.”

• This vision Abraham received is ten years after Genesis 12.
  • Abram is now 85 years old.
• Have you ever had the Spirit of God witness something in your heart and it seems like the days go by, the months go by, the years go by and nothing seems to be happening. And you begin to wonder did you even hear God correctly in the first place?
• Nothing is moving. Nothing has changed. You’re tempted to think nothing is the new norm.
• But, is it true nothing is really happening?

Isaiah 64:4 (ESV)
⁴ From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.

• The truth of God’s Word is this. While you are waiting, God is acting.
• Yes, you did hear God correctly.
• He will make His Word true to you.

[Tweet “The truth of God’s Word is this. While you are waiting, God is acting.”]

Sarah and Abram Try to Make the Promise Happen

• Abraham had this marvelous visitation from God ten years before and nothing has happened since.
• God reaffirms His promise to Abram in Gen 15 and does so by establishing a covenant with Abram.
• But sometimes we think God needs some help getting stuff done.
• So, we set out to aid the process. After all, this ‘waiting business’ is boring. We need to do something.
• That’s what Abram and Sarah did.

Genesis 16:1-4 (NCV)
1 Sarai, Abram’s wife, had no children, but she had a slave girl from Egypt named Hagar. 2 Sarai said to Abram, “Look, the LORD has not allowed me to have children, so have sexual relations with my slave girl. If she has a child, maybe I can have my own family through her.” Abram did what Sarai said. 3 It was after he had lived ten years in Canaan that Sarai gave Hagar to her husband Abram. (Hagar was her slave girl from Egypt.) 4 Abram had sexual relations with Hagar, and she became pregnant…

• Hagar is pregnant. “Finally got the promise,” Abram thinks.
• So what does the Lord do?
• He informs Abram that ‘Ishy’ just ain’t it.

Genesis 17:15-19 (NCV)
15 God said to Abraham, “I will change the name of Sarai, your wife, to Sarah. 16 I will bless her and give her a son, and you will be the father. She will be the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will come from her.” 17 Abraham bowed face down on the ground and laughed. He said to himself, “Can a man have a child when he is a hundred years old? Can Sarah give birth to a child when she is ninety?” 18 Then Abraham said to God, “Please let Ishmael be the son you promised.” 19 God said, “No, Sarah your wife will have a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will make my agreement with him to be an agreement that continues forever with all his descendants.

• God informs Abraham that…
  • Ishy is not the seed.
  • Ishy is not the covenant child.
  • Ishy is not the one through whom all the families of the earth are blessed.
• The Lord could have said, “Well Abraham since you already have Ishy here, why don’t we just use him as the seed.”
• But that’s not the plan. So what is?
• The plan is to take a ninety-year-old women and have her go through pregnancy.
• Think of all the time Abraham and Sarah invested in Ishy and he isn’t even the promised one.
  • They nurtured Ishy.
  • They fed Ishy.
  • They put clothes on Ishy.
  • They provided for Ishy.
  • Sarah would stay up late at night with Ishy when he wasn’t feeling well.
  • They invested time, money, work, discipline, and tons of effort to raise Ishy the right way and Ishy isn’t even it.
• Ishy is not the promised seed.

Abram Has to get Rid of Ishy

Genesis 21:1-3 (NCV)
1 The LORD cared for Sarah as he had said and did for her what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. Everything happened at the time God had said it would. 3 Abraham named his son Isaac, the son Sarah gave birth to.

• Notice, everything happened at the time God said it would not the time Abram and Sarah wanted it to happen.

Genesis 21:9-14 (NCV)
9 But Sarah saw Ishmael making fun of Isaac. (Ishmael was the son of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave.) 10 So Sarah said to Abraham, “Throw out this slave woman and her son. Her son should not inherit anything; my son Isaac should receive it all.” 11 This troubled Abraham very much because Ishmael was also his son. 12 But God said to Abraham, “Don’t be troubled about the boy and the slave woman. Do whatever Sarah tells you. The descendants I promised you will be from Isaac. 13 I will also make the descendants of Ishmael into a great nation because he is your son, too.” 14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a leather bag full of water. He gave them to Hagar and sent her away. Carrying these things and her son, Hagar went and wandered in the desert of Beersheba.

• The set time for Isaac’s birth meant also the set time for Ishy’s eviction.
• God says, ‘Ishy has to go.’

Lessons from the Life of Ishy

• What would have happened had Ishy not been born?
  • Now we know, the descendants of Isaac were the Israelites.
  • The descendants of Ishmael were the Arabs.
  • How did bringing Ishy on the scene turn out in the whole scope of things?
  • We know the Israelites and the Arabs are at odds to this very day. Think of all the wars, all the mayhem which have occurred throughout the centuries because Abram and Sarah tried to help God instead of waiting.
• But, what else does Ishy represent?

Ishy symbolizes our attempt at making life good apart from God.

• If you want to enjoy life, you have to do it God’s way.
  • Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6).
• You have to go the Jesus way in order to experience the Jesus life.
• Ishy represents your will, not God’s will.
• Knowing His will and doing it in the basic areas of life is top notch Christianity.

Ishy represents your way of doing things not God’s way.

• The Lord will not accept your way. That’s very evident from this story.
• God’s not boxed in by seemingly impossible or unlikely circumstances.
• He will bring forth a child from a ninety-year-old women just to prove the point.
• His way is best and His power is unlimited to bring His way to pass.
  God’s way is located in God’s Word.

Isaiah 55:9-11 (NCV)
9 Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. 10 Rain and snow fall from the sky and don’t return without watering the ground. They cause the plants to sprout and grow, making seeds for the farmer and bread for the people. 11 The same thing is true of the words I speak. They will not return to me empty. They make the things happen that I want to happen, and they succeed in doing what I send them to do.

• Your ways and God’s ways are not equal but they can be.
• If you do what His Word tells you to do, your ways become equal to His.
• There is a price to pay for having Ishy around.

Genesis 16:12 (NCV)
12 Ishmael will be like a wild donkey. He will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. He will attack all his brothers.”

• We have already alluded to this in addressing the hostility between Jews and Arabs.
• Ishy will cause you all kinds of problems in your house.
• There’s always a wildness about Ishy.
• Wildness means a lack of peace.
• If you have a financial Ishy, you will lack in that area.
• If you have a physical Ishy, your body can pay the price.
• You may be married to Ishy. If you are you will have all kinds of problems.
• Ishy is born in a certain environment.
• An environment where you have a promise of God but nothing is happening.
  • “Sarah bare Abram no children….” – Gen. 16:1
  • Nothing happened for 10 years in their lives.
• Here you are with the promise of God knowing God’s Word says you will be delivered and you are standing on that promise and it seems like nothing is happening. And it goes on for years.
• Be careful in times of nothingness.
• Sometimes, doing nothing is the proper course of action.

[Tweet “There’s a price to pay for having Ishy around; a wildness about him which means a lack of peace.”]

• The Lord’s way was not through Sarah’s plan.
• The Lord’s way is faith and patience (Heb. 10:35-36).

Ishy Has to Go

• You have to put him out and keep him out.
• What sense is it for God to deliver you if He knows that all you are going to do is turn around and give birth to another Ishy?
• Some people push Ishy out the front door and then Ishy turns and walks down the side of the house and right into the back door.
• This happens in people lives with marriages all the time. A couple divorces but they never solve the problem that caused the divorce in the first place. Instead, they bring that same problem into the next relationship and guess what happens? Another Ishy is born.
• In the Old Testament, a person could experience Jubilee freedom and go right back into bondage the following week of that feast.
• You have to make the decision you are going to follow the Lord’s way.
• You are going to take the time to seek God’s way instead of just acting and reacting.
• You have to be comfortable with the idea of waiting.
• God’s desire for you is not to produce any more offspring named Ishy.
• God wants you to get free and remain free.

Call to Action:

Your will or God’s will? What’s your choice, the promised seed of blessing from God or a wild donkey of your own choosing? Which do you choose, Isaac or Ishmael? God’s way or your way? Which one do you want in your house?

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If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at energized1@outlook.com.

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Question: Have you ever given ‘birth’ to an Ishy in your life. Share what happened and God moved in your life to help you out of the dilemma. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.