Ishmael's Father,
Isaac's Father

At last month's prayer meeting, a few students from CCC — Campus Crusade for Christ — came to join us. After the service, we shared refreshments and introduced ourselves. Most people were introduced as Elder So-and-so, or Deaconess So-and-so. But several were introduced as someone's father or mother, because the students already knew their children. To those students, these adults were simply "my friend's dad" or "my friend's mom."

When you raise children, there comes a moment when you stop being known by your own name and start being known as someone's parent. When children are young, they are introduced as someone's son or daughter. But as they grow, the roles reverse. The more active your children become in the world, the more this is true. The same shift happens in how we judge one another. When children are small, parents pass judgment on them. But the day comes when it is the children who pass judgment on the parents.

Today's passage is no different. We remember Abraham as the father of faith. Isaac and Ishmael are introduced to us as his sons — as Abraham's children. Neither can compare to Abraham. And yet the day came when even Abraham had to stand before his sons. That day was the day of his funeral.

At Abraham's burial, both of his sons — Isaac and Ishmael — were present. We need to consider what kind of father Abraham had been to each of them, and what this means for those of us who seek to live by faith.

Let us first look at Abraham through Ishmael's eyes.

Abraham was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born. When Ishmael came into the world, Abraham and his entire household must have rejoiced. At last, the community had a future. Abraham was the patriarch, the leader of his clan — and yet he had no child. No one could even imagine who would come after him. It was a household without a future. To have no son was itself a dangerous situation.

But then Ishmael was born. The whole household must have celebrated. And so Ishmael grew up as Abraham's son — his firstborn. He would have been raised as the one who would lead the community, the one who would take Abraham's place. Abraham's expectations for him must have been great. Ishmael was recognized as the heir.

Then one day, Sarah became pregnant. Ishmael was about thirteen or fourteen years old — the sensitive, turbulent years of adolescence. As Sarah's belly grew, people's eyes began to shift. Baby Isaac was born, and with him, everyone's attention moved. The very people who had loved Ishmael began, one by one, to gather around the infant brother.

Isaac was the son Sarah bore — Sarah, Abraham's true wife, his companion in covenant, the mistress of the household. Even Abraham could not treat Sarah lightly. She had power and standing, and she wanted to give Isaac everything. Ishmael's mother was another matter entirely. Hagar was an Egyptian slave. She had been regarded merely as a vessel to produce a child. When Sarah mistreated Hagar, Abraham stood by and did nothing. Ishmael respected Abraham as a man of faith and a leader — but the fact that his father did not protect his mother must have been a source of deep and lasting pain.

Ishmael likely held two conflicting feelings toward Abraham. On one hand, love and admiration. On the other, a quiet, persistent hurt. When his little brother was born and his father's attention seemed to shift, Ishmael would have been wounded — and yet he would have tried all the harder to earn his father's approval.

Then one day — the day Isaac was weaned — a great feast was held. In ancient times, when infant mortality was high, a child reaching weaning age was itself cause for celebration, much like a first birthday today. Sarah noticed Ishmael mocking Isaac, and she went to Abraham. Let us read Genesis 21:10 together:

Ishmael, though Abraham's son, was now reduced to "the son of the slave woman." A child of a slave could not share an inheritance with the child of the mistress. Whatever Ishmael had actually done, Sarah had long since made up her mind. A mother will do anything for her child. She believed that casting out Ishmael was the right thing for Isaac.

And so Abraham drove Ishmael and Hagar away. He put bread and a skin of water on Hagar's shoulders and sent them into the wilderness. How much can a woman carry alone? Ishmael was expelled from his father's house overnight — not with an inheritance, not with a portion of the estate. He was simply "the son of a slave woman" now. Though Sarah had acted, Abraham had consented. Whatever internal struggle Abraham may have had, from Ishmael's perspective, this was nothing less than abandonment.

One morning he was the young master of a wealthy household. The next, he was cast into the wilderness. Still not yet fully grown, what could he do out there? It was, in effect, a death sentence. That he survived was purely the grace of God. When he and his mother were dying of thirst, God came to them. And as Ishmael grew, God remained with him. Let us read Genesis 21:20 together:

Abandoned in his youth, raised in the open wilderness, Ishmael grew up. He became skilled with the bow. He built his own family and led his own people. From time to time — whether he wished to or not — he would have heard news of Abraham and Isaac. But he had no desire to seek them out. Just thinking of that family sent him back to the wounded teenager he once was. He buried those memories and let time pass.

And then, before he knew it, he was old. He was nearly ninety years old when someone came with a message: Abraham is dead. Your brother Isaac is calling for you. Come — there is a funeral to hold.

He had long since left all of that behind. But now those names — Abraham, Isaac, that family — came flooding back, demanding to be reckoned with. Ishmael must have turned over all those buried memories as he made his way to the funeral. And so he came to stand before his dead father.

Isaac was also there. Now let us turn to Abraham as seen through Isaac's eyes.

Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred years old — even older than when Ishmael was born. To Isaac, his father was an immense, overwhelming, even frightening figure.

As a child, Isaac must have heard something of a brother who had existed before him. People would have kept quiet about it — but eventually he came to know. There had been a brother, fourteen years older, born of a different mother. And that brother had been driven away. Cast into the wilderness. Isaac would have understood what that meant. Sending someone — with no family, no one to return to — out into the wilderness meant sending them to die. And his own mother had been behind it. The woman who was infinitely tender toward him had done something horrifying for his sake. And his father, the head of the household, had consented. That too was hard for a child to hold.

Then one day, something happened. Abraham announced they were going to the land of Moriah. God had commanded a sacrifice, he said, and so he rose early and took Isaac with him. When they reached the mountain, Abraham left the servants behind and loaded the firewood onto Isaac's shoulders. Isaac began to sense that something was wrong. So he asked his father. Let us read Genesis 22:7 together:

Abraham answered that God would provide. But when they arrived at the top, it became clear: the offering was Isaac himself. Abraham bound his son and lifted the knife to kill him.

What happened in that moment is not recorded. Perhaps Abraham said something to persuade him. But what could he have said? The text is silent. Isaac's reaction is never described. He could not refuse his father's will. Whether it was Isaac's own faith or Abraham's authority that held him in place, he lay bound and waited for death.

God intervened. He stopped Abraham, and Isaac was spared. A ram caught in the thicket was sacrificed in his place. One might say it ended well — but for Isaac, it was a wound that would not heal. My father tried to kill me. That thought would not leave him. He could never fully know when his father might feel compelled to prove his faith again. That must have terrified him.

And yet Abraham was his father — a man revered by all who knew him. Isaac could respect his father's faith, his father's long journey from Ur to Haran to Canaan. He could admire him. And yet he could not fully understand him. He feared him, and yet he could not leave.

After that ordeal, Sarah died. The account of the binding of Isaac in chapter 22 is immediately followed by Sarah's funeral in chapter 23, with silence about what passed in that household between those two events. A mother can die for her child. To endure the knowledge that her husband had nearly killed her son — that would have been unlivable. Sarah died.

Time passed. Isaac eventually married — at forty years old, late by the standards of his day. He wed Rebekah and had twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Time moved on. And at last, Abraham breathed his last. Isaac was seventy-five years old. Only after Abraham's death did Isaac finally begin to emerge from beneath his father's shadow.

As Isaac prepared for the funeral, he thought of his brother. He and Ishmael had no shared memories — they had not grown up together — but he thought of him now. My brother who was driven away because of me. What use is it to call him now? And yet — he must come. Ishmael was the one who remembered their father in his younger years. Isaac needed to see him.

By calling for Ishmael, Isaac was reaching toward reconciliation. It was not Isaac's fault — yet it was on his account that his brother had been cast out. His mother had sent his brother into mortal danger. He could not offer a true apology. But before more time slipped away, this wound had to be faced. By calling Ishmael, Isaac was saying without words: You are not the son of a slave woman. You are the son of Abraham.

Ishmael's coming was the same. He came for the funeral, yes — but also for reconciliation. He could not end his relationship with his father in bitterness and rage. He had carried that hurt for a lifetime. But he could not let it finish that way. He had grown old. He had reached the age his father had been when he first remembered him. He himself now bore his father's face.

With the end of his own life drawing near, he could not go on carrying that anger. When you are young, perhaps you can sustain hatred. But not at the edge of life. He needed to forgive his father. To forgive Sarah. And though it was not his brother's fault, he needed to make peace with Isaac.

And so Ishmael and Isaac came together to bury their father. Let us read verse 9:

Scripture calls them his sons — the sons of Abraham. Ishmael is not named "the son of the slave woman." He is Abraham's son. And Isaac too is named as Abraham's son. The place of Abraham's burial became a place of forgiveness and reconciliation. Each son, in his own way, must have come to terms with his father that day. The funeral of Abraham was at once the farewell of a man of faith and the beginning of healing for two wounded sons.

After the funeral, Isaac went to live near Beer-lahai-roi. This is the very place associated with Hagar — the place in Genesis 16 where God had looked after Hagar when she was driven away. The spring where God met the expelled Hagar — that is where Isaac made his home. There, perhaps, he came to understand his brother's pain and the sorrow that had long haunted his family. And there, God blessed Isaac. After the funeral was done, God blessed him. God counted it precious.

If we look at Abraham only from his own vantage point, his life becomes understandable. He was a wanderer who passed through harsh and dangerous years, living in constant tension. And yet he built a family, a household, a people.

He wounded his children deeply — and yet Abraham had his reasons. He likely thought: If I keep Ishmael here, who knows what Sarah might do? There were things beyond his power to control. When he sent Hagar and Ishmael away, he grieved over it. It was the same with Isaac. Though the text shows no hesitation in Abraham, he must have been in agony. To Abraham, holding fast to his faith was more precious than his own life. Strictly speaking, what he did was not wrong. It was simply what life — and faith — had brought him to.

Abraham was the father of faith — and yet his household knew real pain. There were problems that were never resolved, wounds carried silently for a lifetime. We are no different. We too try to live by faith, and we try to do right by our children — and yet we can still wound them.

There are families of faith where scars remain. Parents who have lived faithfully can still leave their children with pain. From the outside it may not seem serious. But to the person who carries it, it is very real. The private life of a family is not easily understood by those on the outside. A believing household is not a painless household.

I once officiated at a funeral at a former church. Afterward I sat with the family and talked. The deceased had been a well-known figure in the congregation — a person of deep dedication and sacrifice. But his son said something that stayed with me. He confessed that because his parents had been so consumed by church ministry, he had made a private vow: I will be a family-centered man. No church service. Worship only. Then he married — and his wife became the church accompanist. He would attend early service and head home, only to find that everyone else in the family was still at church. He laughed as he said it. But behind the laughter was a wound carried for many years.

It is not only about faith. There are those among us who lived through grueling, relentless years — working without rest, without days off — buying a home, putting children through school. The current generation enjoys prosperity because of that sacrifice. And yet the children experienced something else. They experienced the absence of a parent. A father always too busy to be home, always somewhere else. That empty space became a wound. The father's pride is in all that he provided. The child's memory is of all that was missing.

Many of you know this story from your own families. Your parents endured hardship to give you better opportunities. And they expected you to make the most of those opportunities. But those expectations sometimes felt like a weight too heavy to carry. The absence of your parents in childhood left a mark that has not fully healed. The two sides do not understand each other. The parent thinks: I gave everything I had — and they say I was wrong. The child cries out in pain, and it falls on deaf ears. Silence grows between them. Time passes, and nothing is said.

The truth is, Isaac and Ishmael came together too late.

They should have gathered sooner. Abraham should have called them before he died. He should have worked through things with both his sons — whether by way of apology, or explanation, or simply by finally saying the things that had never been said. There are words that a parent must speak.

There was still time after Sarah died. Abraham took another wife, had more children, raised them — and yet he never turned back to Ishmael and Isaac. He likely knew how Ishmael was getting on — where he lived, how he fared. But he stopped there. That was not enough. He needed to fulfill his role as Ishmael's father and Isaac's father. He never did.

Perhaps he feared standing before them. Many fathers of that authoritative, older generation were like this. To face your children and honestly reckon with the past — that is not an easy thing for anyone.

And yet the day will come when we must stand before our children. Not the day when we judge them, but the day when they judge us. The day when we must ask for their understanding.

Yes, what is past cannot be undone. But the years of pain can be shortened. However many days remain to us, we can set our children free. Perhaps the last task of a parent is to heal the wounds of childhood that we — often unknowingly — inflicted. There may be words that only a father or mother can give.

And to the children among us, I offer this word: just as Ishmael willingly came and stood with Isaac at the graveside, come to the place of restoration. Even if there are words left unsaid, even if wounds remain — the act of coming to that place is itself something precious. If your parents are still living, come to the place of conversation. That alone God counts as precious.

We must not delay any longer. The words left unspoken must be spoken. If you are a parent, tell your children: I love you. I am sorry.

Some of you have already raised your children. Some of you are already known not by your own name, but by whose father or mother you are. It is not too late. Before more time passes, speak the words you have not yet spoken.

My prayer is that for each of you, that day will not come too late.

Let us pray.