Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and it’s my honor to be leading us through Genesis Chapter 16 today. I’ll remind you that Genesis means beginnings and this book goes all the way back to the beginning. While not an explanation for how God created everything, it’s definitely a declaration that God created everything and out of nothing. Some of the biggest questions that we have begin to find answers here in the Book of Genesis, including: Where did everything come from? and What does it mean to be a human person? Those are rooted all the way back in the Book of Genesis. Then the ongoing biblical narrative, of course, is the story of God being in pursuit of a people He can call His own. This story of Abram and Sarai shows the way that God will go to great lengths to preserve His people, and in this particular case, to lead, guide and steer redemption history.
We’re going to be introduced to somebody named Hagar in Chapter 16. Abram and Sarai have been promised innumerable children by God, in Chapter 15 the Lord brought them outside and said, “Look at the stars, Abraham, and if you can number them, that’s how many descendants you’re going to have.” And yet, here’s Abram and Sarai as they come into Canaan, they’re roughly 75 and 65 years of age, and at the end of this chapter we’re going to find Abram 86 and Sarai is 76. Yet they don’t have child number one, so what’s going on? Well, we’re going to have to reach back and jump over a lot of hurdles as we read through these 16 verses; hurdles that are cultural, religious and societal. I see lots of different ways in which it’s a little bit of a brain twister to read some of this and to sift through it.
It’s thousands of years ago and it begins just like this: Sarai, Abram’s wife, had born him no children, so what we call Chapter 16 opens up with the reminder that there are no kids so far. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. The word for maid there in English is probably supposed to be slave, and she was probably given to them as they exited or left Egypt some time ago. Pharaoh had loaded them up with sheep, with donkeys, with cattle and all kinds of resources and sent them off, and he likely included some servants and some slaves during the course of that whole thing. They come back up to Bethel and to the Promised Land, and now the entire focus of this chapter is going to be on the promised progeny, the fact that there were supposed to be children coming along.
Sarai says to Abram, “Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children through her.” This indeed was, again, another one of those hurdles we have to jump, but a common practice back in that day and time. Matter of fact, outside of the Bible, we even read about that kind of a practice, in the Code of Hammurabi and other Ancient Near Eastern literature, we find stories like this. Abram listened to the voice of Sarai, in other words, didn’t just hear it, but actually listened to it. As we find in verse three, after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband, Abram, as his wife. He went in to Hagar and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight.
Now what we have here brewing is a very complicated household conflict. It’s not just that Sarai is impatient with God. He’s made some promises, they’re not happening, so she decides she’s going to take the reins and take control herself, kind of like Abram did when they were living in the Negev. A famine hit, and then we aren’t told that Abram consulted God at all, he just up and moved his family to Egypt, where all kinds of difficult things happened. We have this tendency as humans, including Abram and Sarai, such great names in the Old Testament; we want to take the reins and take control to “help God out.” That’s essentially what’s happening here. Hagar is getting used, and you’ll see, even being abused here in this entire process, in multiple ways.
What happens is that when she gets pregnant, she starts to despise Sarai, her mistress. That’s because it’s almost like the social scales have changed completely; whereas Hagar was a slave and seen as not much more than property in that day and time, now she’s bearing a child or at least carrying a child of Abram’s, and Sarai couldn’t do that. She’s getting a little haughty, looking down her nose at Sarai, despised her in her sight, I guess. Then verse five says, “So Sarai says to Abram,” now here we go, the problems compound. “May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between me and you.” Here we go. It’s almost as if Sarai forgot that this was all her idea. Now that happens to all of us, by the way, we’re all looking for somebody else to blame for this stuff that goes wrong in our lives.
That goes all the way back actually to the Garden of Eden. It’s Eve saying, “That serpent you made.” It’s Adam saying, “That woman you gave me.” We’re just always passing the buck and blaming somebody else when we make a bad choice or we make a bad decision, and the circumstances don’t turn out the way we would like for them to. But here is Sarai and she is just laying into Abram and even throws God into the mix, “May the Lord judge between you and me,” and throws a mic drop kind of thing. Well, Abram says to Sarai, “Behold, your maid is in your power, do to her what is good in your sight.” See, he’s pointing the finger right back at Sarai. We’ve got this real difficult moment and conflict between them, and Hagar’s in the middle of it, she’s a participant in all of this, not by her own choice, but she is still involved in all of this stuff.
The tension is great, and they didn’t have all kinds of thick walls back then, I mean, if they’re living in tents, everybody can hear everything. This is it; they’re really upset with each other. Abram says to Sarai, “It’s your maid, you do to her what’s good in your sight.” Sarai treated her harshly and she, meaning Hagar, fled from Sarai’s presence. That’s the end of verse six. The camera lens is going to change a little bit, but that’s the end of the scene there. I think about Hagar and I think about all that she’s been through: She got torn away from her own family and her own land; she’s an Egyptian and she got forcibly given to this other family who takes her up North… Sure it’s a wealthy family, they’ve got a lot of stuff and all that sort of thing, and yes, sure, they seem like “godly people” and all that sort of thing. But look at the conflict between this godly couple.
By the way, if you ever have conflict with others in your own life or in your own marriage, you’re right here. We can identify with this kind of stuff, can’t we? How’s God going to respond to all of this? What’s the Lord going to do? Here’s Hagar, now pregnant, carrying, Abram’s child, hasn’t delivered it yet, and she’s literally a runaway at this point. Here’s what happens. Verse seven, “The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur,” S-H-U-R, and that’s down toward Egypt. She’s literally hightailing it back to her own country, maybe thinking she can find her own people. She’s pregnant, alone and out in the wilderness. It’s dangerous out there. She doesn’t have any supplies, she literally just left with the clothes on her back. Wow.
This is a difficult situation that Hagar is in. Yet we’re told the angel of the Lord found her. In other words, the angel of the Lord was looking for her. By the way, this is the first time the phrase “The angel of the Lord” shows up in the Bible at all. The first thing that we read about the angel of the Lord doing is finding someone. Add to that, finding a woman. Add to that, finding an Egyptian woman, not even among the ones that you might likely think the Lord would be looking for. Now, this is somebody from another nation, from a nation that later on in the history of redemption will be a difficult place for the Israelites to be, yet the angel of the Lord goes and finds her by spring water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way back to Egypt. Then He says to her, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid,” He knows her name. He knows your name. He knows my name. Every name matters in the Bible.
That’s why I never weary of the “begats,” because every name matters, because every person matters, every human life matters in the Bible. We’re creatures created in the image of God. From the womb to the tomb, you matter, and I matter, because God’s the one who created us. I love that. He finds her, He says, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?” That’s why I want to title this study, “Where did you come from? Where are you going?” That’s a great couple of questions. By the way, angel of the Lord, God, Jesus, any of God’s angels, whenever they ask questions, they usually know the answers. Especially God, especially when Jesus asks a question, these are rhetorical questions. Why? Because He wants us to think about those questions and the answer that we might give to those questions.
Hagar, I know you. You’ve been abused. You’ve been displaced. You’ve been so, in every way, broken, and your life is wrecked and ruined. Where did you come from? Where are you going? Great despair behind, literally no hope before her or ahead of her, and here comes the angel of the Lord. This is just amazing. She responds with such great honesty. She says, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai.” I’m literally running away. Here’s the God of the Bible, man. He loves runaways. He loves anybody that’s been broken and rejected. He loves us, who have been through this kind of stuff, the kind of injustice that she’s suffered.
Well, the angel of the Lord says to her after she says, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.” This is kind of shocking but catch this. The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit yourself to her authority.” Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they shall be too many to count.” Now, whose promise does that sound like? That sounds like the same promise, very similar at least, to the one that’s been given to Abram and Sarai. Abram and Sarai have a promised land as well as a promised progeny, but here’s Hagar, pregnant, alone, out in the wilderness, and not sure of anything that’s ahead of her, and evidently the angel of the Lord knows something more about what’s ahead of her. He knows it’s better for her to go back rather than run away. It’s better for her to take that little baby in her womb, go back, and be with Abram and Sarai than it is for her to go on to Egypt.
She gets a question, “Where’d you come from? Where are you going?” A couple questions, a command, and a promise. I love the way the Scriptures do that. We often find the Lord offering those kinds of things; questions that help get us thinking, some kind of command that reshapes the path we’re on, redirects us. We might be completely following our own desires, our own foolishness, all of that. The Lord says, “No, no, no, over here. This is where I want you to go,” and he shepherds us, and he’s a good shepherd. That’s what I love about Him. Here comes some more information from the angel of the Lord.
Verse 11, the angel of the Lord said to her further, “Behold, you are with child.” Now, she’s probably going, “How in the world can you tell that?” She’s got some robes on her, whatever, and yet the angel of the Lord knows this. He knows that she’s with child, that’s what the conflict was all about with Sarai. But how does this angel know that? He even goes further, “And you will bear a son.” Without a sonogram, the angel of the Lord is telling her it’s going to be a boy, “And you’ll call his name Ishmael,” which means God hears. Here’s the angel of the Lord under God’s instruction, finds, speaks to, and also hears. I love the God of the Bible. I love the God of the Bible for this.
When I’m lost, the God of the Bible will find me, will speak to me if I go to His word, if I am looking for something, some word from God; it’s to be found here, or general principles that apply to my life and my situation. I’m not in the same position these three folks are in, neither are you, but yet there are some great principles that we’ll learn here. Then, there’s this command, this promise. You’re going to have a child, it’ll be a son, call his name Ishmael because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. In other words, name this child in such a way that you’ll be reminded over and over and over again that the Lord not only heard you, but He heeded your cries for mercy. I love this. He was aware of your suffering.
There’s some bad news, though, about Ishmael that is also going to be told to Hagar here from the angel of the Lord, “He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him,” a very contentious life ahead for Ishmael. “He will live to the east of all his brothers,” and probably some kind of way of saying the same thing again, there’s going to be this strife all the time. Then, she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “Thou art a God who sees.” This is one of the reasons why some theologians think that this angel of the Lord is actually a Christophany, a pre-incarnation appearance of Christ, or perhaps God, appearing to this lady who is on a run, Hagar. She says, “You’re a God who sees,” for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Look at her… This should happen to all of us when we get in the presence of God, we should tremble a little if we’re in the presence of the real God who’s actually there.
If we’re just in the presence of the god of our imagination, we will probably never tremble. But there’s a good kind of trembling, and I think, sadly, a lot of us in this world are trembling at the wrong things and not trembling at the one right thing. We should be trembling whenever we’re in the presence of the Lord because He hears us, He sees us, He’s seeking us, He finds us. This is really good. I love this text. This is so wonderful. Therefore, verse 14 says, the well that she was at, this spring of water, was called Beer-lahai-roi. That simply means the well of the living one who sees me. Not only does He hear, and she’ll be reminded of that all the time because she’s going to see her son Ishmael all the time, reminding her that God hears, but whenever she passes by that well again, she’ll also be reminded that God sees her. He finds her, He speaks to her, He hears her, and He sees her.
The same is true for you, and the same is true for me. This is the same God, this God of the Bible. Well, Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Evidently, Hagar goes back and tells Abram the whole thing, Sarai, the whole thing, and they all just agree, “Yes, we need to call this boy Ishmael because he’ll remind us,” just like the angel instructed, this is what we should do. Of course, Abram was used to the Lord speaking into his life, and Sarai as well, and so somehow that all happened and worked out. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him. Eighty-six, it’s going to be another 14 years until Isaac shows up on the scene, until the fulfillment of the promise that Sarai is already impatient with.
We’ve got some things to learn here. Yes, these three characters in this particular Bible story here, that is an account of something that really happened… It’s based on history and redemption history. Yes, they’re unique in many, many ways, but there are some principles I think that are timeless for us. For instance, number one, sometimes I think we mistakenly think God’s delays are a sign that we should take over, or at least help God out a bit. I don’t know if you ever do that. I don’t know if you’re kind of a control freak, or maybe you live with one or you know a few, maybe somebody’s thinking of you right now, but we’re all kind of this way.
We’re so microwave-minded in our day and time. We’ll have something on our prayer list. We’ll pray about it on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and by Thursday, man, we expect God to be in motion. Even in my prayers, I’m even saying, “Lord, let me suggest to you if you could arrange for this to happen, use this person at this time, that place, and this pace of things.” All of a sudden, sometimes I wake up in the middle of my prayers, having drifted into this thing where I’m advising the sovereign God of the universe. Well, that makes no sense at all. It made no sense for Sarai to step in and become God’s little helper in this particular moment either. Here we learned that God’s delays are not God’s denials. God has a perfect time for His purposes to be accomplished. If we knew everything that God knows, His timing might make more sense to us. That’s true. But the fact is we don’t know everything God knows.
Now what is called for is a faith that trusts and rests in the promises of a sovereign God who we will see. We will find out that, 14 years later, God will be faithful to His promises, and it will be increasingly more unlikely from a human point of view, which really leads me to the next point. Sometimes God removes every means but the miraculous before He fulfills His promises. Why would God do that? Well, follow the glory, that’s why He would do that. You see, the glory of God becomes more and more and more luminous and brilliantly splendorous in every way. The glory of God continues to increase on a natural level when we just can’t see any way this is going to happen.
C.S. Lewis said it this way,
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
–C.S. Lewis
Even as science has progressed so much… I mean Lewis died in ’63, so do you realize what we’ve learned about science and about the universe in which we live, and what is written across the whole world in letters so large that some people still miss it? I mean, just human DNA, come on. The real intelligent information that is on your DNA and on my DNA — that is profound. For someone to say every human life doesn’t matter, or some human lives don’t matter, or some human lives matter more than others, that’s just wrong, man. Every human being has this script, this intelligent design script, written into our DNA, and it’s what makes you uniquely you, and you matter to God. Your name, your DNA, all designed by God. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Hagar, fearfully and wonderfully made. Abram, Sarai, fearfully and wonderfully made.
For Bible-believing Christians, you see, every human life is a testimony to this God who retells in small letters, so small as to be called DNA, what is written all across the universe, there is a God and He’s in pursuit of a people He can call His own. Third, just because something seems reasonable and expedient, is permissible by law and acceptable to our culture, it may still run contrary to the will of God.
In her attempt to fulfill a longing of her own, to have a child, in her attempt to please her husband, in her attempt to help God fulfill his promises, Sarai makes this move that’s not sanctioned by God. As well, I should also say, the whole idea of slavery throughout the Bible, this is not condoned by the Bible. It’s regulated, if anything, and God’s putting boundaries up left and right saying, “You cannot abuse people. Every human life matters, see.” God makes this promise to Hagar for this progeny, the same kind of promise He’s made to Abram and to Sarai. Your descendants are going to be so numerous, numerous, again, as the stars or the sand. But Sarai reminds us that most of the time we can’t have our cake and eat it too, we can’t be the ones in control and in charge. Even though the culture may permit something, the culture may even celebrate something, that doesn’t mean that God’s people should. That doesn’t mean that God’s people ought to at all. That’s something really important for us to think about in our own day and time as well.
Wholly to be set apart wholly unto the Lord. This is God’s purpose for His people. Fourthly, we should always test our own thoughts in the council of others against the will of God as revealed in the Word of God, and that’s so important. If only Abram had that kind of ongoing, clear-cut communication with God and had stopped and asked the question, “Hey, is this okay?” If only Sarai had thought of that and just continued to walk in trusting rest in God and His promises, a whole lot of trouble would’ve been avoided here. The same is true for me in my life, and in your life as well. We need to constantly test the ideas that come our way, the thoughts that form us and shape us that come from our culture, that come from cable news, from all social media, all of that. We test all of that by what we know to be the Word of God, the Bible itself. That’s why we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel.
Fifthly, Hagar reminds us that wherever we go, we can never wander so far away as to be out of reach of the God who finds, speaks, sees and hears. I love that about this particular passage. I love the way the Lord injects Himself, intervenes in her life. Again, she wasn’t looking for Him, the Lord came looking for her, found her, spoke to her and let her know that He sees her and He hears her. He made promises to her about her future. This is so, so beautiful. I love Genesis 16. All right, to close this up, lastly, the God who sees and hears asked these two questions, and I think they’re still good questions: Where have you come from? Where are you going? Whatever our need, the God of the Bible is listening, is watching and knows where we are.
That alone is such a great comfort to me, and I hope it is to you as well. I love the way Cornelius Plantinga said it in Not the Way It’s Supposed To Be, one of my very favorite, probably top 20 books,
“Anxiety is only the context for sin, not its cause. Our base problem is unbelief. Failing to trust the infinite God, we live anxiously, restlessly, always trying to secure and extend ourselves with finite goods that can’t take the weight we put on them.”
–Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be
Sarai should not have tried to take the reins and the controls away from God. I should not do that either. Abram should not have done that when they went to Egypt. All of us need to take stock of what it is that makes us worry. It’s the context for sin, according to Plantinga, not its cause. Our base problem is unbelief. When we’re anxious, it’s because we don’t think God will get it right.
If we’re angry, it’s because we think God got it wrong. We need to go and repent for our anger, and even for our anxiety. We need to see it for what it is. It’s the context for our sin, not the cause of it. Glynn Harrison says,
“In a manipulative consumerist culture, far from being the architects of our own destiny, maybe the idea of inventing ourselves is simply something else that we have been sold, and the real driver is not the individual at all. The result is an increasing sense of fragmentation and instability of the self.”
–Glynn Harrison, The Modern Crisis of Identity
That’s from his book, The Modern Crisis of Identity. Boy, is that a great title and, boy, does that speak to our time. Glynn Harrison, a mentor to Rico Tyson, another preacher I know of and quote from time to time, but he says it so beautifully there.
We really can’t bear the weight. We’re not meant to. We’re not designed to bear the weight of an autonomous self-definition. We don’t belong to ourselves is what the Bible teaches us. We rejoice as we rest in belonging to God, in being His sons and daughters. Well, this chapter is another picture of seeing humanity in all its rough and tumble sort of way of living and responding to one another. Maybe there’s something for you to learn here or something for me to learn here as well, and certainly as it relates to my own prayer life. My prayers sometimes are very awkward, sometimes very short and sweet. Sometimes I just don’t even know what to say to God, maybe you’re like that.
Max Lucado, a very popular Christian author, has said something about prayer that I thought was worth closing with today.
“Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.”
–Max Lucado
Folks, this God of the Bible, He hears your prayers. He sees you. He knows where you are, and He loves you. He’s done everything necessary for you to live in the right relationship with Him, and you can trust Him. Amen.
(Edited for Reading)
