Psalm 86

A prayer of David.

⁸ Time went on, and Isaac grew and was weaned from his mother. Abraham prepared a special feast in Isaac’s honor, to celebrate the day he was weaned. ⁹ But a damper was put on the day when Sarah saw the son Hagar (the Egyptian girl) bore for Abraham laughing and teasing her son. ¹⁰ She became jealous and demanded of Abraham:

¹¹ Sarah’s demand was extremely distressing to Abraham, since Ishmael was also his son. ¹² But God assured Abraham.

¹⁴ So Abraham got up early in the morning, took bread and a container of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulder, gave her the child—his firstborn—and sent her away. She left and wandered in the wilderness near Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the container was all gone, in desperation she left the child under the shade of one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she walked off and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away.

As she sat there, she cried loudly. ¹⁷ God heard the voice of young Ishmael, and a messenger of God called out to Hagar from heaven.

¹⁹ Then God opened Hagar’s eyes. She looked up from her grief and saw a well of water not far away. She went over to it, filled the container she carried with water, and gave the young man a drink. ²⁰ God watched over him for the rest of his life. Ishmael grew up, lived in the wilderness, and became an expert archer. ²¹ So Ishmael went on to live out his life in the wilderness of Paran. When the time was right, his mother obtained a wife for him from her homeland Egypt.

6 How should we respond to all of this? Is it good to persist in a life of sin so that grace may multiply even more? ² Absolutely not! How can we die to a life where sin ruled over us and then invite sin back into our lives? ³ Did someone forget to tell you that when we were initiated into Jesus the Anointed through baptism’s ceremonial washing,^[a] we entered into His death? ⁴ Therefore, we were buried with Him through this baptism into death so that just as God the Father, in all His glory, resurrected the Anointed One, we, too, might walk confidently out of the grave into a new life. ⁵ To put it another way: if we have been united with Him to share in a death like His, don’t you understand that we will also share in His resurrection? ⁶ We know this: whatever we used to be with our old sinful ways has been nailed to His cross. So our entire record of sin has been canceled, and we no longer have to bow down to sin’s power. ⁷ A dead man, you see, cannot be bound by sin. ⁸ But if we have died with the Anointed One, we believe that we shall also live together with Him. ⁹ So we stand firm in the conviction that death holds no power over God’s Anointed, because He was resurrected from the dead never to face death again. ¹⁰ When He died, He died to whatever power sin had, once and for all, and now He lives completely to God. ¹¹ So here is how to picture yourself now that you have been initiated into Jesus the Anointed: you are dead to sin’s power and influence, but you are alive to God’s rule.