Abram's Adamic Failure

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 16:1-8

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Well, this morning we look to begin chapter 16, and we'll look at the first eight verses of chapter 16, and then next week we'll go into a little more detail as we round out chapter 16.
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And then we'll resume in chapter 17 a little bit more of our time considering the covenant structure of the
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Bible. Chapter 17 is very important, and we'll consider how Hagar and Ishmael fit into chapter 17, and how the
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New Testament understands these things. And so, this chapter is very important. It will be very important as we move into chapter 17 and consider once more covenant theology.
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And so I hope that this will be helpful for us as we understand it's difficult at times perhaps to grasp some of the concepts and the language of covenantal theology, and yet to put the time in, to take the time to do it, will help you to understand the flow of Scripture, and soon you'll be able to give a summary of the
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Bible from Genesis to Revelation in a matter of minutes just by understanding that framework of the covenant.
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Now as we head into chapter 16, we want to keep in mind the larger context. In fact, we want to keep in mind the whole story of Abram.
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In Genesis 12, God called Abram by sheer, sovereign, unconditional grace, and He gave him unconditional promises.
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He would make him a great nation. He would bless him. He would make his name great.
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Bless those who blessed him. Curse those who cursed him. That through him, all of the families of the earth would be blessed.
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And that his seed, his descendants, would inherit the land. Then as we see a pattern emerge, after Abram received such blessing, received such strength from the
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Lord, his faith is tested. And it was tested, not even by the end of chapter 12, when a famine came into the land and Abram descended into Egypt.
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And he doesn't come through that encounter to Egypt very well. This is the first test of his faith, and he completely failed.
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The promises of the covenant, he completely failed. Protecting his wife, he completely failed.
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Threatening what God had called him to be and do, he completely failed. All through unbelief,
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Abram endangered the purpose and plan of God, and so God had to come in and rescue
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Abram and rescue Sarai and rescue Lot and bring them back into the land of Canaan where Abram was restored repentantly to worship and call upon the name of the
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Lord at the altar. And then we see, not surprisingly, his faith strong again.
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His resolve and his devotion strong in Genesis chapter 13. Abram demonstrates his renewed faith.
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And he also shows this humility that has come through the experience of failure.
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We haven't quite seen the meekness and the humility of Abram in the narrative until this failure has come along.
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We see it in the way he settles the dispute between the herdsmen of Lot and his own herdsmen.
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We see his humility in the way he offers his young nephew the best of the land all around him as far as he can see.
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We see not only his humility, but his faith. He's trusting in the Lord to provide for him in the midst of a famine, in the midst of the land that is promised to him.
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He is trusting in God. And then that faith continues in chapter 14.
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His faith is perhaps as vibrant as ever. Though there's a world war raging all around the land, five armies against four armies, and they're ravaging the whole domain,
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Abram is willing to raise up a little force of 318 men, plus some other forces from his neighbors, and do a night raid against the successful army of Keterleomer.
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And so he wages this war and he rescues Lot. Such was his trust in the Lord. He knew what
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God had promised him and he knew that God would grant him the victory. That much, Melchizedek, the righteous king of peace, had promised him.
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The Lord God Most High has given victory into your hand. God Himself said,
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Abram, I am your shield. And so his faith was shown not only in the assault, but also in his refusal to take that serpent -like offer from the king of Sodom.
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He wouldn't be stained with the worldliness that would keep him in the same predicament he found his nephew in.
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And now we come to chapter 15, which we considered over the past two weeks. And we see that though God has promised to be his shield and make
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His reward very great, we see the discouragement shining through. In the midst of that faith and that trust, he signals to the
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Lord, the only reward I want is what You originally promised. It's what me and my wife have been waiting for all of these years, all of these decades in our marriage.
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We want a child. We have a household, but we want a child. We want one of our own.
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Lord, what's my reward? Who is my heir? You promised.
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You promised that You'd give me children. You promised that You'd give me a seed. You promised that You'd build me a house.
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You promised me descendants in this land. So what is my reward? What will You give me, seeing as I go childless?
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And that's when the Lord gave His great promise. Come out, look at the night sky. Remember who I am, the maker of the heavens and the earth.
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In the depths of the earth, to use the language of Psalm 139, I knit together children,
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Abram. Just like I knit together the canopy above you, the starry cosmos and all of its wonder.
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I alone do these things, Abram. Now that should have been enough, but it wasn't.
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Abram stretches a little bit further. How will I know? How will I know? And that's what we considered last week.
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God establishes a covenant with Abram, an unconditional, unilateral covenant with Abram.
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In the most striking way possible, God shows him just how committed he is to bless Abram and to bless the entire world through Abram.
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He has Abram cut the pieces of the animals, these clean, sacrificial animals, and make a corridor, as we considered.
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And Abram, I'm sure, as he was waiting throughout this whole day, chasing off the birds that were coming to consume these animals and their carcasses, he must have been swallowing hard, his heart pounding.
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How can I walk through these pieces and be liable to a curse? How can I stand before a holy
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God who I've already failed? He knows how wavering my faith and my doubt is. I'm not strong enough.
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I can't pass through this. How could it be? And he watches as Yahweh himself passes through these parts.
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We talked about the significance of that last week. And then we have no indication of the time.
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Weeks roll by, months roll by, perhaps years roll by. And then we come to our plot this morning, beginning in verse one.
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Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had an
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Egyptian maid servant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, see now, the
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Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her.
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And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the
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Egyptian, and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. After Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan, so he went into Hagar and she conceived.
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What a contrast to the last chapter. Derek Kidner says, and I think he's right, this chapter marks another stage in eliminating every means but miracle toward the promised birth, you see?
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Exhausting every avenue that this could possibly come about unless it's done miraculously by God.
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And so this is part of the story. There's no other way unless God does it. God must proverbially make a child out of the dead, out of the dead womb of Abram's barren wife.
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And what a contrast to the victories and the hilltops and the heights of success and faith and assurance and promise that we saw in the last chapter.
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What has happened? How the mighty have fallen, we want to say.
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The seeming distance of God's promise has fallen out of view. It's made it fall out of view.
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And the present reality of continued infertility and advancing age, every year is another year older for Sarai another year toward menopause if she's not there almost already.
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All those seeds of faith that God had planted at every step when they came to the altar, when
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His faith was renewed, now these seeds of faith are becoming seeds of doubt. The morning must have been,
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Sarai, you know, it's 10 years, it's been 10 years since we've been in Canaan. Some of you have been walking with the
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Lord for about that time. Thank God some of you have been walking with Him even longer, some of you not even so much.
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For those of you in that sort of general 10 -year mark of walking with the Lord, how much time and how many things, how many seasons, how many circumstances have changed in the decade you've been walking with the
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Lord? Take a moment to consider that. From the time
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He first called you, when you first felt His presence, His authority, the truth of His Word, the power of His salvation, the power, the cleansing power in the blood, how much has changed in your life?
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How many trials have come and gone? How many circumstances have rolled, shocked, surprised, maybe challenged you?
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How many people have betrayed you? How many friends have come and gone? How many people have fallen away?
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A lot happens in a decade, a lot happens in a decade. Abram was 75 years old when he entered
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Canaan. Sarai was 65. Perhaps initially they thought
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Lot was going to be the heir, but now he's chasing after Sodom and even if it was tongue -in -cheek, in chapter 15,
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Abram says, Eliezer of Damascus, this is the heir, this is the only heir I have, I have one born in my house, but then
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God clarified His promise, no, this one shall not be your heir, one born from your own body will be your heir.
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But now they're a decade deep in Canaan and there's no answer in sight.
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And all of the pain and all of the time, the patience that becomes irritating, discouraging, hope, exhausting, is all captured in verse one.
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Sarai, Abram's wife, had born him no children. What a banner statement to chapter 16.
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They've been clinging to that promise ever since chapter 15. Every hour, every day, every morning, if there was the equivalent of the 99 cent purple dye test, they would have had a pallet of them outside of their tent.
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Could it have been this month? Could it be this month? Maybe next month,
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Sarai, let's not lose heart. God has promised. Maybe another month, Sarai. I know you're getting older,
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I know you're going through those hot flashes, it's been tough in the tent for me too. But let's not lose our faith.
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God has promised. Finally, their hope has dwindled to the point where Sarai herself begins to lose heart and she begins to scheme.
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Clearly, God is not in this. Clearly, God has not given me a child. It must be that though you're meant to be the father and from your body, your seed will come,
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Abram, but it won't be through me. And so we read, she had an Egyptian maid servant whose name was
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Hagar. Now how did a couple from Ur of the Chaldeans obtain an Egyptian maid?
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The probability seems very high that it was a gift from Pharaoh to Abram. A very polite, please get out of my kingdom gift.
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Seeing as you cursed my household for the time you've been here. We read at the very beginning, in the midst of Abram's deceit, therefore he treated
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Abram well for Sarai's sake and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants.
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So perhaps Hagar was one of these gifts initially or perhaps it was as he was leaving. It seems that Hagar was the consequence of Abram's failure in faith in chapter 12.
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Now that in itself is instructive to us, right? Here's a consequence of Abram's sin in chapter 12.
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And notice that it's just been patiently waiting for all of these chapters, for this entire decade it's been hovering there.
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The consequences of sin are inevitable one way or another. God is not mocked.
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A man reaps what he sows. This is what scripture teaches. And so Sarai could not possibly have schemed in this way if Abram did not decide to descend into Egypt in his doubt and in his deceitfulness.
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Now the terminology used here of Hagar's status is in relation to Sarai, not in relation to Abram.
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Abram of course would have been the head of the house. He would have been the head of the home and in that sense he would have been head over all that was in the home.
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Including the male and the female servants. But here the relationship between Hagar and Sarai is emphasized.
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She was the right hand woman to Sarai. She was very close.
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She was the mistress. Not just one of the other female servants but right next to her.
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The one that would be on her side at every situation.
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It was a privileged position. Almost a personal assistant. She would have had authority over the other female servants and perhaps even the other male servants.
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She was exalted in this status. And the Hebrew makes that clear. Different terms used for her status compared to other servants.
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And so Sarai trusts her. She trusts Hagar. Hagar doesn't really have a say in this.
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This is part of the injustice of this fallen situation. Sarai says to Abram, see now.
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The Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Now it's amazing to me how from that confession she'll go on to propose what she proposes.
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Notice the confession here. See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children.
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That's good theology. Where did she pick that up? In Egypt. When God closed all the wombs in the harem and Pharaoh could produce no children.
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And there they learned that Yahweh controls the doors of the womb. He decides what children come and when they come.
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So Sarai has the right confession. She does understand and she even confesses. Abram, we both know.
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God is able to restrain and to bless. He's able to give and to take away. God himself has restrained me from bearing children.
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She recognizes that the maker of heaven and earth is the maker of all life. But notice, even though she's confessing the sovereignty of God over her womb, she's acting against that belief.
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She's acting against that belief. She has a right confession but her actions speak against it.
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And it makes me wonder where do I have the right confession? God is sovereign but my actions totally speak against that.
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Anytime I grumble at some uncontrollable providence in my life,
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I am doubting the confession that I make. God is sovereign. Oh, I can't believe.
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Why could this be? This makes no sense. She has a right confession.
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But in her actions, she denies it. She's claiming that God is sovereign but she's not acting that way.
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She's not living that way as she's proposing for Abram to do this heinous thing.
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She's doubting God. She's taking matters into her own hands entirely. Please, go into my maid.
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Now here's the doubt. Perhaps I'll obtain a child by her. She doesn't even know if this will work. Perhaps.
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She moves from the utter confidence in the sovereignty of God to perhaps this is what we're to do.
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I have no idea. Any thoughts? Maybe this will work, maybe it won't. Right confession lived out, applied, completely wrong.
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Now, at the time, this was not utterly unique. This was something that was customary.
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Doesn't mean it's right, moral, or good. It just means that in a fallen world, in fallen situations, these kinds of things occurred in the ancient
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Near Eastern cultures. We have examples of this. The late Ephraim Spicers, a great scholar of Genesis, he cited several examples.
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Just to give you a few, we have marriage contracts from a certain tribe, late
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Bronze Age tribe, called the Nuzi. And according to the contract, if the wife bears children, the husband may not take a second wife.
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I love monogamy in the ancient Near East, beautiful. But notice, if she fails to do so, the wife must procure for the husband a servant woman as her surrogate.
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If children result from this union, they will legally be the children of the childless wife. So this is a different culture and a different time period, but it seems to be parallel.
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There's a surrogacy here. A servant can be the surrogate mother, and legally, in terms of the culture's definition, the offspring of that union would be the wives, the childless wives.
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Another law, more familiar perhaps than the Nuzi, is the Code of Hammurabi. Same case, slave woman as a surrogate wife bears children, and then it's dealing with the repercussions of that.
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If this servant woman aspires to have an equal status with the barren wife, or is even accused of doing so, she can be branded with the mark of a slave, so now she's reduced in her status, but she cannot be excluded from the household.
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She cannot be sent away. She cannot be dismissed. There's a way of maintaining that hierarchy.
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And this is what Hagar's up against. She has to walk this fine line of being the most trusted, the most exalted servant,
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Sarai's right -hand woman, but if she can even be accused, potentially, of seeking to be equated with Sarai, then she can be reduced, and apparently even sent away, as we'll see in chapter 21.
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Think of the apparent reality, not just of Hagar, we'll talk about later, but Sarai.
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Sarai felt personally responsible for the absence of the son. God had promised
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Abram offspring, and as far as Sarai's concerned, that's all on her.
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She's the failure here. She's the shameful woman. She's the obstacle to God's blessing on Abram.
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Since she has not given birth to a child, and since she's advancing in age, she takes that responsibility, that burden, that reproach, that shame.
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She has to find a way to somehow be fruitful for Abram, to produce for Abram what a wife is meant to produce, especially in the eyes of the ancient
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Near Eastern culture, where a woman's value, socially, was constructed in part upon this.
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In every culture at this time, barrenness was seen as a reproach. To have a son was to have a lineage, a dynasty, a house.
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That's why the rulers and the shakers of the earth had harems, that they could have many sons in a mighty dynasty.
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Well, here's this promise to Abram. His children are going to bless every family in the earth.
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He's going to have a dynasty that will last. From it, kings and queens will come, and she can't even produce a child.
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To be childless was this mark of reproach, and it must have every day caused anguish in her relationship to the
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Lord God. To me, I can only think, no wonder Sarai could start scheming and manipulating in this way.
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She must have already been so distant from God, so distant from God. 1
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Samuel 1, we have an example of this with Hannah. There was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was
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Elkanah, the son of Jeroboam, sorry, Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuth and Ephraimite.
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And he had two wives. The name of one was Hannah. The name of the other, Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
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This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts in Shiloh. Also, the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the
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Lord, were there. And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters, but to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved
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Hannah. Although the Lord had closed her womb. Again, sovereign recognition. The Lord has closed
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Hannah's womb. And her rival, this is very interesting for Genesis 16, her rival, that is
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Peninnah, also provoked her severely to make her miserable. Do you see this rivalry?
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Hannah, the childless one, has this mark of reproach, but Elkanah gives her a double portion, shows his favor toward her.
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So there's this rivalry now. Peninnah doesn't like the fact that this childless woman is getting more honor and more favor from her husband.
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And so she provokes her, makes her life miserable, must always flaunt her children.
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Oh, sorry, I'll need to take him back now. Time to nurse him. And so it was year by year when she went up to the house of the
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Lord that she provoked her. And therefore, Hannah wept and did not eat. The reproach, the misery, this is what
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Sarai's dealing with day by day. Her inability to have children was not just a social stigma, a social reproach.
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It must have impacted her understanding of who God was and how God regarded her. If society regards me in this way, how does the
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Lord God regard me? If God has promised my husband all of this abundance and fruitfulness,
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He said it, your reward will be very great. And my husband said, how will I know? Show me.
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Oh, you're going to have children from your body. How excited Abram must have been when he rushed home and picked up Sarah and hugged her tight and swung her around.
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He's gonna do it now, he's gonna do it. But now the weeks have rolled by and every month is a failure, is another failure, is another failure.
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No wonder she's so distant from the Lord. The flower is fading, the time is running out.
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She has to do something. Every day is a humiliating day. And it seemed to her like the promise was actually depending on her.
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You know, sometimes in the Christian life it seems that way, doesn't it? It seems as though God's promise is actually depending on us.
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If I just clean up my act, if I can just get my life together, how many times would that cycle have exhausted poor
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Sarah? I'll watch my mouth more, I'll be kinder to my servants, I'll do more around the home,
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I'll protect my thought life, I'll be careful not to gossip, I'm guarding my heart against envy and discontentment, I know how irritable
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I can be. Maybe then, once I get these things in place, God will bring me a pregnancy and I'll be able to finally be what
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I've always wanted to be to Abram. Abram's name means father of many.
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What kind of cruel mockery is that? Father of many, exalted father.
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When he introduced himself to Mamre or his other neighbors. What's your name?
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Abram. Oh, how wonderful. Exalted father, father of many, that's wonderful. How many children do you have?
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None. I remember when
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Alicia and I were under the impression that we were barren and going to some of those family conferences and of course, everyone around you can't blame them, they're excited, they're thankful to the
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Lord for the gift of children, it's a blessing. Excited to be in a position to disciple them, to raise them in the fear and admonition of the
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Lord, to nurture them, so that all excitingly, they wanna share, how old are your children?
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How's it going? Are you gonna homeschool? What's that gonna look like? Are you nervous? Let me tell you some advice.
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Inevitably, the wallet flips open with the 18 children and we're just there like, we watch kids cartoon movies and we don't even have kids.
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We want them so bad. And it's an easy thing to get into a complex over it.
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The promise is resting on me and it's my failure, that's what's holding it up. And so, when she goes to Abram, surely he saw all of this pent up anguish, humiliation, this feeling of being an utter failure, this feeling of being cursed of God.
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Your life, your whole life and your whole future, Abram, would be better if you had never married me.
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The servants in our home, they all have families and I, what am I to you but a roadblock, a failure?
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Surely Abram's heart was so tender, just like Elkanah's heart was tender to Hannah. Maybe this is how
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God will do it and Abram could have reasoned, that's true. Maybe, Sarah, maybe, because he did say my body, he didn't say yours.
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Perhaps you're right when you say, perhaps we will obtain children by her. And so we read the statement,
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Abram heeded the voice of Sarah. That is not the response we wanted to hear.
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That's not the response we wanted to hear. We wanted to hear, please go into my maid, Hagar, perhaps we will obtain children by her.
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No, Sarah, no. Don't you remember what God had said? We've been calling upon the name of the
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Lord, don't you know His promise is sure? Yes, it's been hard. I know that for you it's been harder, but we have to be patient, we cannot lose faith.
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Has God ever failed? Don't you remember the mighty things He's done already? Do you remember how He called us out of her and look at all
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He's done in this whole decade? I know it's been hard, but don't forget the victory and the hope and the surety.
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Do you remember His glory when He passed through the animal parts? I can't,
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I can't forget that, Sarah, I won't. I will not do this thing. What does He say?
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Just nods. He goes in. He goes to Egypt again,
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He doubts. Abram heeded the voice of Sarai, and Sarai, Abram's wife, took
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Hagar, her maid, and gave to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. Boy, that language sounds very familiar, doesn't it?
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And she took and she gave, you almost heard it say, and he ate of it, and doesn't that sound familiar? It's very purposeful, there's echoes.
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In these verses, the echoes of Adam and Eve. And the great temptation of Eve when she was deceived by the serpent and she offered the fruit that God had forbidden to her husband and he ate.
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She gave, he took, and he ate of it. Sarai would not wait for the
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Lord to fulfill His promise of offspring, and so she invents a way.
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Perhaps this is the way. It's easier for me to invent and to have some sense of control, some sense of maybe this will work, than it is to depend.
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It's easier for me to manipulate than have faith. It's easier to do something than to wait.
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And Abram literally paid heed to the voice of Sarai. It's the same construction in Hebrew.
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The same exact construction. When God rebukes Adam in the garden, and He says, because you paid heed to the voice of your wife, and you ate fruit from the tree about which
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I commanded you, you must not eat from it. It's the same dynamic here. Notice that there's this theme then of this fallen relationship and the spread of the fall, and Adam is in every single one of us.
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Adam is in every lazy, passive husband, easily manipulated by trying to keep the peace in the lowest common denominator in the home.
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Eve is in every woman, seeking to lead and take charge and usurp the leadership and the wisdom of her husband.
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We see this fallen dysfunction in the marriage of Abram and Sarai. And notice the parallel, it goes so deep.
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Remember we talked about the suzerains and the vassals. The suzerain being the great king and the vassal being the lesser king.
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Sometimes the vice -regent, the co -ruler. And so in some ways, when they abandoned the
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Torah, the law of God in Genesis 3, they were receiving the
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Torah of the serpent, the law or the instruction of the serpent. In that way, the serpent became, as it were, the suzerain over them.
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But also, it goes a step deeper. In some ways, the Genesis narrative in Genesis 3 is saying
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Adam somehow became a vassal to Eve because he heeded, he obeyed her instruction.
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He listened to her. And so the parallel is very significant. Just notice a few of these things.
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In Genesis 2 and 3, Yahweh commanded regarding fruit, right?
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He gave a command regarding fruit. In Genesis 15, Yahweh promised fruit, right?
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So there's a command about fruit, there's a promise about fruit. In the fall, Genesis 3, Adam pays heed to his wife.
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In Genesis 16, Abram pays heed to his wife. In Genesis 2, Adam set aside
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God's command because he accepted his wife's instruction and he took fruit. In Genesis 16,
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Abram sets aside Yahweh's promise when he accepts his wife's instruction and therefore he produces the wrong fruit.
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See, all of these parallels are swarming within the text. Fruit here is a double entendre, double meaning.
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In each case, whether it's Adam or Abram, the husband heeded the instruction, the
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Torah of the wife and not the instruction or promise of God. And in each case, this led to a disastrous result.
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So sin begins with a failure to believe God, to pay heed to what God has said, whether as a command or as a promise.
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All sin begins with this attitude of unbelief. And that's why we can say that this failure of Abram is an
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Adamic failure. It's an Adam -like failure. He's gone from being the great hope in Genesis 15 to being another line of fallen
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Adam. He passively, like Adam, receives what his wife brings to him.
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He does not question it, he just partakes of it. He does not rebuke her, he does not remind her of the promise of God, of the
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Word of God, he simply receives what she brings to him. He becomes completely passive and complacent.
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Instead of doing what Adam was meant to do, protecting, guarding, leading, striking and chasing out that serpent so that it would not deceive the woman that he loves, he capitulates, he allows
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Sarai, in her disillusionment and despair, to be deceived, to be further troubled.
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And he welcomes corruption and brokenness into his home, just like Adam welcomes corruption and brokenness into the world.
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Now let me say this as a caveat. It's not always wrong to listen to your wife.
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In fact, you're a foolish man if you don't. God himself, in a few chapters, will tell
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Abram, pay heed to your wife. So it's not just that whatever the wife says, the husband's to resist.
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It's rather, whenever the wife says something that's apart from the will of the Lord, that's when the husband is called to resist, to lead, to wash his wife with the water of the
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Word. So it's not always wrong to listen to your wife. A foolish husband will refuse the wisdom and discernment of the wife that God has given him.
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Often God leads a husband through the wisdom, the wise, seasoned words of his wife.
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The problem is when the husband abdicates spiritual leadership, abdicates spiritual responsibility.
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And that's just what is so disgusting and horrific about passivity. By being completely passive,
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Abram feels unresponsible as he literally takes corruption and dysfunction into his home.
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And as he puts a plague next to his lineage forever. And he feels like, well, it wasn't my decision.
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She brought Hagar, Lord. She gave me the fruit. It was her, really. It was you.
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You gave me her. Passivity in a husband is the gateway to dysfunction.
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And this is a test for both Abram and Sarah. I won't rehearse everything on the passivity of husbands because we spent a lot of time on that in Genesis 3 when we looked at the failure of Adam.
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The point is this. This is a test of faith. We've seen many such tests of faith throughout these chapters so far.
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And of course now, after God has established this covenant in an unconditional, unilateral way in Genesis 15, which should have been so obvious to Abram and Sarai, they need to look through their apparent reality, their present despair, what seems to be so distant and forgotten.
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They need to actually exercise faith in the midst of that. And trust that what God has promised to do by Himself, He will do by Himself.
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Notice also, before we move on, that there's no confession.
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There's no repentance. There's no seeking counsel from the Lord. There's no erecting an altar. There's no calling upon the name of the
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Lord. It's just a completely fleshly scheme that Abram totally capitulates to.
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He might have thought that he was being pious when he was being passive. So how did we get from chapter 15 to this?
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We're looking at it all condensed nice and neat on a page and we're forgetting what it's like to actually live out week by week this life of faith.
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And that's why I asked you at the beginning, just think back of what a 10 year stretch has been for you in your life, in your walk, and that's with you coming to church regularly and opening up the
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Word and having brothers and sisters surrounding you and pointing you to the Lord week by week. Abram and Sarah, I do not have that.
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They do not have that. And that 10 year stretch is long. So don't judge them too harshly and say, if only, if only
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I could have had that kind of experience that they had in Genesis 15. I mean, if somehow the
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Lord just spoke audibly to me, I know everyone else would think I'm crazy, but if he did that to me, my whole life would be different, turned upside down.
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I'd evangelize to anyone in passing, even if I could only do it for three seconds, everything would be different. If he would pass in front of me, if I could see the afterglow of his glory going through those animal parts,
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I might never sin again, to be honest. I definitely wouldn't doubt, unless I had some memory loss of that event.
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How could I doubt? I saw with my own eyes, I was there. I can go to the place and remember. So I just frankly don't understand why this could happen.
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Well, I hope we're all honest enough with ourselves to know exactly why something like this could happen. Time rolls on.
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And that reality that seems so apparent from our faithless, selfish perspective makes the promise that is sure from God seem so distant and out of reach.
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And soon it seems like everything's depending on us. We have to make it happen. Notice as we move to verses four and following this dysfunction that Abram was brought into his household continues.
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As soon as Hagar conceives, Sarai becomes despised in her eyes, verse four.
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And so Sarai says to Abram, my wrong be upon you. At least she, this is kind of,
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I hate to say this, this is such a classic wife move. Okay, I'm sorry, but.
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My wrong be upon you and now you're gonna get it. Hey, what was it? Wait, wait, slow down. What was that first part? My wrong be upon you.
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I gave my maid into your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived,
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I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judged between you and me.
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So once Hagar had conceived, she began to think a little less of her mistress, the one that she dutifully served and loved.
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And think of all the time that they would have been so close, doing certain things together around the home, preparing certain things, enjoying certain things, laughing.
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They would have had inside jokes together. That truly in the home, it was family. This was
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Hagar's family for all intents and purposes now. But she's become pregnant with Abram's child and now she begins to see herself as a little superior to Sarai.
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God's blessing her, right? The reproach is still there on Sarai. I've put my time in the trenches and now
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I'm finally getting some due, getting my reward. I'm a wife to Abram now. I started from the bottom and look where I am now.
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I'm a wife in this household. And we already know there's at least 318 trained young men.
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This is a lavish household. And she's heard of the promises that Abram has received and she's seen the things that he's done in that home.
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And she knows I have a lineage that is secure now. I have a child with Abram.
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And so this whole plan goes up in smoke. It crumbles just like Abram's plan crumbled when he was down in Egypt.
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Just like Penina who was provoking the childless Hannah. Now there's this rivalry.
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There's this contempt between Sarai and Hagar. She looks down on Sarai.
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She made light of her. That's the Hebrew verb, glal. She makes light of her. I don't really have to think too fondly of you or do what you say anymore.
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Now Sarai, if there is true parallel between this and some of the Code of Hammurabi, for instance, or some of the other contracts we have,
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Sarai does have discretionary power over her still. And that's why she goes to the head of the household.
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She goes to Abram. Basically says, you need to do something about this. This cannot keep going on this way.
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I know the plan was originally I give you Hagar so Hagar can be your wife. And if you have a child with her, that child will be ours.
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And wouldn't it be nice if Hagar could just disappear now? We both got what we wanted. Wouldn't that be nice if we could just discard
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Hagar? This is significant because that sinful inclination is here in chapter 16.
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And God does not respond to Hagar in that way. She comes to Abram and says, my wrong be upon you.
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I've lost status in her eyes. I've become unfavorable to her. She has contempt toward me.
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God judged between me and you. That's like, you would never say that unless you were absolutely sure that you were completely just in your complaint.
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And Sarai is not completely just in her complaint. There is sin all around here. There's sin on Hagar's part.
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Though she was in a compromised sort of victim -like state, she has a sinful pride.
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She's not walking wisely in her home. There's sin on Abram's part. His passivity still, which we'll see in just the next verse.
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And there's sin certainly on Sarai's part. She really thinks she's completely just, completely innocent, and so she calls
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God. God judged between you and me. You would never invoke that unless you were absolutely sure. This was the last resort of legal language in the ancient
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Near East. So no one here is a hero. No one comes out unscathed. There is no one who has not sinned.
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No, not one. And therefore, this whole passage between Hagar, which we'll see,
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Sarai, and Abram, is this vibrant reminder that God does not love us because we are lovely.
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God does not love us because we're well -ordered and have the right instincts and behave the right way.
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God loves us because He is love and He sets His love unconditionally upon those.
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While they were still sinners, He's reconciling them to Himself. He loves us out of His goodness, out of His purpose, which is sure and cannot change.
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And so it's because of who God is, not because who Hagar, Abram, or Sarai are, that they're loved and that God's purposes will continue.
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And this dysfunction continues now. We see that Sarai is mistreating Hagar. And it's all because Abram, this dysfunction, he's still passive.
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Even at this complaint, the Lord's judged between you and me. He doesn't spring into action. How could I let things get like this?
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It's time to call in a meeting. We need to sit down, and as long as it takes, we need to work toward a resolution. I need to broker peace between Hagar and Sarai.
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We need to understand the significance of what the Lord would have me do. It's time to repent now. Time to repent now.
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Right, Abram? Indeed, your maid is in your hand.
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Do to her as you please. I'm sorry, that's your wife now, Abram.
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That's your wife. Your maid's in your hand. What's the easiest way for me to keep peace with the wife of my youth?
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Completely check out. Sarai, you're not gonna be happy unless she's gone. And I'm not gonna restrain you anymore because I don't wanna put up with this kind of contentiousness.
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So just do what you want. Completely passive. Despicable. Do to her as you please.
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Abram greenlights abuse and maltreatment. And we read that.
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Sarai dealt harshly with her. How harshly? Harshly enough that she ran into the wilderness to get away.
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That's pretty harsh. That's not like a snotty 12 -year -old running away for a day because he didn't get what he wanted for his birthday.
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This is, it's better to die in the wilderness than be around Sarai. I'll take my pregnant self and walk through the desert.
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That's how harsh. And Abram's completely passive in the midst of this. I've been working so hard over these few chapters to praise the faith of Abram, to keep him in the perspective of that Hebrews 11 gallery of faith.
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And now we're kinda going, who is this? And who is his wife? What does 1
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Peter say about Sarai? Not only is she threatened by staying, she's threatened by running away.
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To be a fugitive slave is a death penalty. And Sarai seems to have the heart to do that.
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Just give me the baby and then let's get rid of her. We don't know where Hagar's going.
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She's wandering through the Sinai wilderness. She moves between Havilah and Shur to the place where she'll give birth to Ishmael, and this will be what becomes
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Ishmaelite territory. It's a barren, desolate place.
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Abram's household is completely crumbled before his eyes. This little scheme to try to produce the child and make the promise happen has bit them and torn them all asunder.
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But we're gonna keep going, of course, in chapter 16 next week, but I just wanna end with this note in verse seven and eight.
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This whole time, Sarai has completely turned cold toward Hagar, and this rivalry and contempt between them has sprung out of control to the point that it's better for Hagar to run into the wilderness and potentially die in the wilderness than to stay with Sarai, and so she runs away.
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She runs into the wilderness. Notice that Abram doesn't come chasing after her. Notice that Sarai doesn't gather up some of the young men because she realizes she's just lost control and this is a terrible thing.
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Someone go find her. Notice that that doesn't happen. Good riddance. She was just a slave anyway.
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Nice that our little scheme kinda cleaned up nicely. We just don't have to deal with it anymore, which is how human beings treat human beings.
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I mean, we're talking about going to Planned Parenthood. This is how human beings treat human beings made in the image of God. Isn't it nice that our consequences could be cleaned up so neatly?
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Out of sight, out of mind, good riddance. Isn't it nice that these things are happening in other places in the world that are not happening to me?
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My home, my city, and that's why I love this intervention.
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We've been following the echoes of Genesis 3 in the fall. Here it is, God intervenes.
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God intervenes. Notice that here He intervenes first to Hagar and not to Sarai and not to Abram.
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There's kings and rulers that command thousands. They command legions. And they build mighty empires and provinces and vast domains and we don't even know their names.
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But we know the name of this slave from Egypt because God determined to show mercy to her.
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She might be discarded by Abram and Sarai, her very vengeful and utterly passive clown of a husband at this moment, and a vengeful, spiteful, hateful wife.
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And they might discard Hagar, but God won't. Hagar too is made in the image of God.
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And even though they've sinned against her and they've wronged her, and even though she's a sinner herself, God's mercy goes to seek out such.
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So we read in verse seven, the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to shore.
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And he said, Hagar, Sarai's made. Ooh, that must have stung to hear that. Sarai's made.
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Where have you come from? And where are you going? Only to Hagar does
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God speak. The whole reason that Hagar's pregnant right now is because God wasn't speaking to Abram and Sarai.
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He was making them wait in faith and be patient on his promise, and they weren't. When he comes to intervene, he speaks to Hagar.
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If you were an Israelite reading this and you're thinking you are the favored people of God because you are children of Abram, something that Jesus rebukes them for,
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God's able to raise children up out of these stones. This would be a hard verse to swallow.
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God's only speaking to Hagar here? What happened to that favored status of Abram? We don't care about Hagar, but God does.
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She had heard from afar the stories and the prayers and the songs to the
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God of Abram. She had seen what it looked like when Abram built an altar and called upon the name of the
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Lord. She had heard the testimonies. She had perhaps learned to sing some of the tunes praising
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Yahweh. Maybe this was just one of the many gods because she still took with her the gods of Egypt.
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Or maybe she was beginning to have some concern, some doubt. Maybe this really was the God. Look at how he's moved.
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Look how powerful he is. We don't know whether she had any faith at all, no faith, no doubt. We know that the
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Lord comes to her. And as we'll see next week, she trusts in him. Now we read, the angel of the
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Lord found her. And there's something you should know about the angel of the
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Lord. Here, this is the first instance of angel.
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And here you have this additional modifier of the Lord. And you'll notice that in our translation, the
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A of angel is capitalized. And I think that's right. I think this is a pre -incarnate manifestation of the
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Son of God. We have other instances where this is the angel of the
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Lord. And those instances as well are parallel.
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They're pre -incarnate manifestations of the Son of God. Brothers and sisters, in verse seven, we have nothing less than the good shepherd seeking a wandering sheep.
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If you wanted to know what the character of God is like, whether he's trustworthy, whether it's true that his eye is on the downtrodden, whether it's true that he won't stuff his sandal on a flax and quench it out, put something out of its misery, if he'll take even the most crumbling parts of your life and restore them and make them beautiful again.
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If you ever doubted that, look at verse seven. The good shepherd goes looking for her.
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God is a seeking God. He's a searching God. He finds her.
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The angel of the Lord found her. Abram didn't find her. Sarai didn't find her. She has no friends and family.
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She's all by herself in despair. You can picture her weeping the whole way until she's drawn up all the water out of her eyes and she's gonna wither away.
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But God finds her. It wasn't that she came to a point in her life and said, okay, it's time to straighten things out.
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I need a little help. I can see now the things that I've done wrong. It's time to clean up. I guess I'll go back and I'll decide.
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I'll make this decision by faith to make God my Savior. No, if you're a Christian, you honestly know that that's not how you're saved.
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You're saved because God found you. The Lord found you. And he called you.
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This is a basis for the God who shows mercy. He's a searching God. He's a pleading
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God. A God who goes to the wilderness. A God who comes for the downtrodden and despised. He does not look for those who are healthy and well and well off.
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Because he says, I'm a physician. The healthy have no need of a physician. I come for those who are sick, leprous, diseased.
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I come for the blind and the lame and the paralyzed. The people who are helpless and so they cry out to me.
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That's the kind of God I am. That's the kind of God I am. Spurgeon in one of his evangelistic sermons that he preached at night.
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Just read this to you, it's so beautiful. This is what he's picking up on. This is a manifestation of the Son of God.
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If you wanna know the character of God, you look at Him in whom the fullness of the deity dwells bodily. Spurgeon says,
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I think I see her there. Her eyes red with weeping. Her spirit broken. She sits by the spring, refreshed for a moment, resolved never to stoop, not to go back.
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But also shuddering at the darkness that lies ahead, afraid to go on. For all intents and purposes, she's a friendless, outcast woman.
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She had left the only tent where she could even claim a shelter. She's gone into the wilderness. No father, no mother, no brother, no sister to care for her.
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She turned her back upon any who had an interest in her. And now she's left alone, alone in a wilderness without an eye to pity her or a hand to help her.
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It was then that God met with her. Spurgeon says, I've been wondering in my soul when
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I turned over this text, whether there would stray into this tabernacle, right, the metropolitan tabernacle, some kindred case.
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And whether though no angel spoke, yet the voice of man might be tonight, the voice of the messenger.
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I don't know you by name or face, but I know you by feeling. It may be tonight that you're sorely angry, greatly vexed, wounded, wrathful.
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You've made up your mind to choose the world and give up every semblance of what is good.
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It may be tonight that you've lost everything that makes earth worth living in. And you long for death because you'd almost seek the place where the lamps quiver on the dark river.
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Your spirit is bitterness itself and all the lamp of hope has gone out. Oh, but by this, we see
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God's mighty mercy ordained to meet you the very evening in which the Lord will call out your name.
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You will feel that He knows you, your case, your circumstances, that He's come to call you to Himself because you never would have been called unless this had happened to you this evening.
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Do you see? God doesn't call her in the tense. He doesn't call her in the happiness. He doesn't call her when she's exalted.
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He calls her when she's desperate and alone and realizes she has no hope. And that is when
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God calls. And when He calls, as Spurgeon says, it's intensely personal.
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You don't hear, see, you just know. He knows everything about you and He's sympathetic to it.
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He's a faithful high priest and you've never even heard Him give His word, but you know His testimony is true.
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He's never uttered a promise to you, but you know every promise is yes and amen in Him. And not only are they yes and amen in Him, they apply to you.
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Where have you come from? Where are you going?
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These are the questions that Abram and Sarai should have asked themselves. When Sarai came to Abram and said, take
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Hagar, go sleep with Hagar. Maybe this is how we'll get a child. He should have put his hands on her shoulders, wept with her, because you don't get to that kind of place unless you're completely destitute of hope.
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He said, Sarai, where have we come from? We were in Ur, worshiping unknown gods.
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Where have we come from? Look where we are, look at what God has done. Look at what we have all around us. Where are we going?
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You heard what I heard. You know the promise of God. Abram is right back where he started from.
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He's not taken one step toward the fulfillment. Despite all of these schemes and all this manipulation, all he's done is bring disorder and dysfunction and doubt into his home, issues into his marriage, brokenness into his relationships, trouble, sorrow, bitterness.
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Not one inch toward the redemptive purpose of God. But thank
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God it's not resting on Abram. And thank God it's not resting on Sarai. Thank God it's not resting on Hagar.
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It's resting on God, God Himself. And so I ask you the very same questions that the pre -incarnate son asked
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Hagar. Because I don't know if this morning you've come to that place where you can finally, because of your circumstances, hear his calling upon you.
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And I ask you just to ponder his questions. When the angel of the Lord said to Hagar, where have you come from and where are you going?
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It wasn't just meant to be, oh, I come back from between the territories of Mamre and I don't really know where I'm going.
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Maybe somewhere closer to Egypt. It's not what he was asking. And so I'm not asking you something simple.
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I'm asking you something profound. Where have you come from? What has
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God been to you in your life? What has your walk been?
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Where are you and where are you going?
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When you leave this place this morning, where are you going? Are you going further into a wilderness that is weary and exhausting and hope extinguishing?
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Or are you repenting? Are you turning around? Are you crying out to the physician, the good shepherd who came to stop you in your tracks, to call you?
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Where have you come from? What has your life been?
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What kind of brokenness have you endured? Has it been the kind of brokenness that Hagar endured? Has it been a life of misery, dysfunction?
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I was reading a blog post and someone in the blog post was talking about some difficulties of their family in the childhood.
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All of the comments were just people wanting to share their own. This is the family I grew up with. This is the kind of dysfunction
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I had with my siblings and my parents. We live in a fallen world and it's messed up just like this tent.
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Where have you come from? Was it so bad that God is not present, that God is not watching?
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Hagar must have felt like she wasn't even a flick on the radar screen. Would she have ever known that the maker of heaven and earth who had given all of these covenant promises to Abram, her husband for a season, who doesn't even care if she dies, would she have ever known that that God was watching her, was chasing her, was calling her?
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You might feel abandoned from everyone you've ever known. Let God be true.
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Let men lie. Let God be true, that he's the one who sees. He's the one who watches.
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He's the one who pursues. He's the one who calls. Where have you come from? That's the question the
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Holy Spirit is asking you. What are you leaving behind in order to follow him?
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What will it cost you? What are you turning your back on? What does repentance look like for you? Where have you come from?
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And where will you go? What will you need to now turn your back upon in a different way?
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Where will you go ultimately speaking? What is the end of your life as it's being lived? What are the consequences of your actions?
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Abram didn't have a consequence from Egypt until four chapters later. There's something coming four chapters ahead of you.
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What's that going to be? Where are you going? Where will it carry you?
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What will it do to you? What will it rob you of? What will it break? What people will it tear away? What misery will it bring into your life?
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Where have you come from? Where are you going? Let's pray.
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Father, our words are weak. We cannot impress them upon the hearts of hearers.
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Lord, you alone can implant your word, make it fruitful. Do that,
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Lord. I pray if there's someone who sees themself, perhaps a husband who sees his evil passivity in Abram this morning, that you would convict him of that,
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Lord. Lord, I see my own passivity. It disgusts me. Forgive me.
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Help us to be men after Christ, men who protect at a cost, men who lead when it's hard to lead, because it's hard to lead.
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Lord, if there's a woman here who sees herself in Sarai, who sees that contempt, that despair, that disillusionment, who is trying to take control of things because it's easier to do something than to wait upon you,
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Lord. Convict. Restore unity in marriages,
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Lord. Bring peace and joy. That comes, Lord, from walking according to your purpose and being united by your purpose.
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Wash us, Lord. Faithful husband, wash your bride this morning. And if there's anyone in this room that sees something of themself in Hagar because of their past, because of what they've endured, because of where they are, feeling desperate alone, those sitting here surrounded by people, their souls, their hearts, their soul is in a wilderness,
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Lord. Directionless, waiting to die. Once you find them,
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Lord, as you found her, call them. Lord, renew the faith of your people and give us hope.
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And in this very place, if there's people who are not your people here,
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Lord, this morning, may they be called sons and daughters of the living God. These things we ask in your