Rosh-Ha Shanah/Yom Teruah (Jewish New Year/Biblical Feast of Trumpets)

1^st Day:
Genesis 21; Numbers 29:1-6
1 Samuel 1:1-2:10

^“Then God opened her [Hagar’s] eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy [Ishmael] a drink” (Gen. 21:19).

^“’He [Abraham] said, ‘These seven ewe lambs you [Abimelech] will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well.’ Therefore that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath” (Gen. 21:30-31).

Today, Muslims of Mid Eastern descent claim their lineage to Abraham through Ishmael. Jews claim theirs through Isaac. God tells Abraham, “through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (vs. 12), though God would “make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he [Ishmael] is your [Abraham’s] offspring” (vs. 13). They are both offspring, but only Isaac is the son of the promise. What promise? The promise to bless all nations through him, to inherit the land God promised to Abraham (Gen. 18:18; 12:7).

Even though Ishmael did not inherit the promise, he is not left without being blessed by the promise. At the southernmost border of the land of promise, in Beersheba, Ishmael is saved by a well God shows his mother, Hagar. This is likely a well Abraham had previously dug (Gen. 21:30). Water is a biblical symbol of spiritual life-giving force. Though Ishmael is sent away from sharing as heir in the promise (vs. 10), he still benefits from it through the life-giving well Abraham dug.

Two thousand years later, the Descendant of Isaac, the Heir of the Promise, sat by a well dug by Isaac’s son, Jacob, and told a Samaritan woman that she worships what she does not know, but Jews worship what they know, “for salvation is from the Jews” (Jn. 4:22). Though she is not Jewish, Jesus tells her, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14).

Ishmael would grow up to make a great nation according to God’s promise, and his nation would be one of all the nations who would be blessed by the Offspring of the promise. Throughout history and today, Muslims persecute Jews, and Ishmael mocked Isaac, thus being sent away. Today, the descendants of Ishmael live largely in arid, desert-like regions both literally and spiritually. These countries are closed to the gospel and persecute Christians and forbid Muslims to convert to Christianity. But Jesus is revealing Himself to them in visions and dreams like He did to Hagar, and showing them how to find Him, how to find the well that can spring up in their very souls. Just like God opened Hagar’s eyes, he is opening the eyes of her descendants. Just like how Ishmael was sustained by the well Abraham dug, Arabs today can find their salvation in the One who was born as and died as the King of the Jews (Mt. 2:2; 27:37), the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 3:6), the God of Israel (Ex. 24:10), because God is not a God of Jews only, but Gentiles also (Rom. 3:29).