Sunday Night, March 25, 2018 PM

Across these from time to time. But Genesis 16 is the story of, it's titled just simply Sarai and Hagar, but of course Abram was involved in this as well. And as always, we will find God the center of attention.

Sarai and Hagar: Barrenness, the Promise of the Seed, and Human Schemes

Begin reading the first six verses. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had born him no children. And she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, "'Now behold, the Lord has prevented me "'from bearing children.

"'Please go into my maid. "'Perhaps I will obtain children through her.'". And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 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 into Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. And Sarai said to Abram, "'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 you and me.'. But Abram said to Sarai, "'Behold, your maid is in your power "'to do to her what is good in your sight.'. So Sarai treated her harshly and she fled from her presence.

Well, what a mess, right? What a mess. Now, time and again, we will find in the book of Genesis and other places, but especially in Genesis, as our attention has been fixed on the seed, the seed of the woman, the offspring, the promised one to come, time and again, we find the peril of death, the peril of the one family being destroyed, interspersed and dissolved into other families, but also the peril of barrenness.

Sarai was barren. Later on, we will find that Rebecca was barren till God gave her twins. We will find that Rachel was barren. We're gonna see a lot of barrenness throughout the stories in Genesis. And again and again, it comes back to this promise of the seed.

And after the curse and Adam and Eve being exiled from the garden and facing the prospect of death, that there, Adam names his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. And there's this hope that God will sustain life in the face of death.

But the great struggle is there, time and again, and this is no exception. So, Sarai, Abram's wife had borne him no children. Now, this is a statement that comes after we hear in Genesis 15, the Lord take Abram out into the night to strengthen his faith, tells him to lift his eyes to the heavens and count the stars if he is able.

So shall your seed be. So shall your descendants be. Abram believed the Lord, was reckoned to him as righteousness. And yet sometime after that, in Genesis 16, the hard reality is closing in, especially on Sarai.

She's barren, she has no children. And yet there is this Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. How in the world did they end up with an Egyptian maid? Any guesses? Yeah, she was a slave of some kind. She was in the household of Abram, but how in the world did they end up with an Egyptian slave?

Right after God called, yeah. Well, yeah, you're on the right track. Chapter 12, God called Abram to leave his homeland, come to land that I will show you. He shows up and God assures Abram he's in the right place.

And Abram looks around and says, no, there's a famine. I think I'm in the wrong place. And keeps on traveling down South to Egypt to flee the famine instead of trusting the Lord to provide. And he goes down there running away instead of sticking to it in faith.

And he's concerned now for his own safety because someone's gonna kill him and take his wife. And so he tells her to lie and he lies and says, she's my sister. And they get into a passable of trouble in Egypt.

And yet God fixes it all and they get out of Egypt. And in a sense, even plundering Egypt, they get away with all sorts of goods, livestock and servants. It's how Hagar shows up in Abraham's life because of an act of disobedience.

Well, she's there and notice what Sarai says to Abram. Verse two, Sarai said to Abram, now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Is that a true statement? Yes, that's an absolutely true statement because God's in charge and he's sovereign.

Now, what about the attitude? True statement, but as brother Jerry has already pointed out, it's a matter of attitude, right? With what attitude is she making this true statement? Right, yeah. It's truth, God has prevented me from having children.

Yes, that is true. But she seems to be saying, this is wrong. This is out of order. He's not being good and we need to make other arrangements. So it's a true statement, wrong attitude. The Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Please go into my maid, perhaps I'll obtain children through her. Now, this is to our ears, wrong, adulterous, immoral, so on and so forth. And also, we don't live in a culture that is in a situation like this where we have a married couple of a great household and then they have slaves that they can choose to do these things with, okay?

Very, very foreign to our situation and yet it was not something foreign to Abraham and Sarah. This is something that was very common in the ancient Near East. This is not at all out of the ordinary. And we should remember that later on, Jacob, whose name would be changed to Israel, wanted to marry Rachel, Laban tricked him and gave him Leah and then also Rachel.

And then in the sisters' war with one another for the favor of their husband, gave each one of them a maidservant to him. So he ended up with four wives out of which all the tribes of Israel came, okay?

So remember that this is not gonna be the last time we hear about this custom. And in that case and in this case, we sense a great deal of folly, a great deal of brokenness. Polygamy in the Old Testament is a pattern that we see but it's never approved of and we always see folly and fallout because of it, okay?

Proverbs 24, three says, "'By wisdom a house is built "'and by understanding it is established.'. But this is not wisdom and this is not understanding. But Sarah is interested in a household being built.

That's the term she uses. When she says, perhaps I will be built from her is what she says, literally. She's looking forward to build a household, to build a family. She thinks this might be the way, but it's not wisdom.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. There's an echo here. Does that sound familiar? Adam and Eve. And Adam listened to the voice of his wife. And he took some of the fruit and he ate, remember? So Adam's job in that situation was to keep the garden, meaning to guard it.

It was his job to wring the head off that talking snake because it was a threat. It was also his job to inform Eve of the commands that God had given to them as humanity. They were not allowed to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And it was his job to inform her of that. And we see that she knew the word of the Lord because Adam had told her. But at this point, he's not listening to the word of the Lord. He's not listening to the voice of God.

He listens to his wife in this moment. And if she had said something very godly, it's a good thing to listen to his wife. But she did not say something godly. She said something contrary to the word of God.

And in that case, he was liable. He listened to her rather than to God. And Abram does the same thing here. He listened to the voice of Sarai. And so we have a timeline now. After Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan.

So Abram is 85, 85 years old. He was 75, he was called out of Ur. So he's 85. 85 years old, it's been 10 years since the initial promise. It's a long time to wait, a decade. It's a long time to wait, especially when you're as old as Abram is and as old as Sarai is.

And so Abram's wife, Sarai, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband, Abram, as his wife. And lo and behold, it works. Their little scheme works. And that's the problem. A lot of the times, the alternatives that we cook up to do, instead of waiting on the Lord, they work.

And that's a problem. And it causes all sorts of consequences. Now notice that Sarai, at first, blames the Lord. And then, after Hagar conceives, and Hagar fancies herself as more of a woman than her own mistress, Sarai is now angry with Abraham.

She says to Abram, may the wrong done me be upon you. May the Lord judge between you and me. That's an interesting thing. What happens when we stop trusting God? We start blaming God and others. It's a clear sign that we have stopped trusting God when we start blaming God and blaming others.

You can't have one with the other. And it's a symptom. It's a symptom. And Sarai, she's no longer trusting God, and so she starts blaming. And notice, notice Abram. Is he ever in the mold of Adam at this point?

He's passive. He's passive. Adam was passive in the garden, didn't step up and do what he was supposed to. He was passive when it was clear that his son Cain was in anger towards his other son Abel. Adam's totally absent from the entire story.

He's passive, not getting involved. And here's Abram again, passive. Now, go ahead and do what you want. Well, you know, guys, that's a really easy way to avoid conflict. And it's a real easy way to bring all sorts of extra problems into our families.

Playing the passive role, backing off, not being involved. We got to listen to the voice of the Lord, and with understanding, live with our wives in an understanding way, and reckon that we are called to love them and to guide them.

But passivity is the cardinal sin. It's the Achilles heel. We can't do that. We've got to be involved. Jesus gave us the model, right? Sacrificial leadership. Sacrificial leadership, servant leadership.

The Angel of the Lord Meets Hagar and Names Ishmael

So Sarai treats Hagar harshly, and she fled from her presence. Now, the angel of the Lord found her. I love him. And this doesn't mean that he lost her for a little while, but it means that he meets her, okay?

There's an encounter here between Hagar and the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, reminding her who she is.

Where have you come from and where are you going? You remember when God came walking into the garden and where are you? What's going on? Not so much that he doesn't know, of course, but opportunity for us to talk with him, right?

Asking his questions. So she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai. Then 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 will be too many to count.

The angel of the Lord said to her further, behold, you are with child and you'll bear a son. And you shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He will be a wild donkey of a man.

His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him. And he will live to the east of all his brothers. Now, the pattern in which the angel of the Lord speaks to Hagar sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?

It greatly multiply your descendants, too many to count. Sounds like what God said to Abram, right? About his descendants. The way that the angel of the Lord speaks with Hagar, sounds like the way the angel of the Lord or the angel speaks with Mary.

Hold, you're with child, you'll bear a son. But there's significant differences too. Significant differences. Ishmael, whose name actually in the way that it's spelled in the original Hebrew looks a whole lot like Samuel, because it's the same idea.

The Lord has heard, the Lord has answered. Ishmael is gonna have a restless experience. He's gonna be wandering about, but this is not gonna be a pilgrimage, not like Abram. He's going to be non-conforming, but he's not gonna be a light to the nations.

He's just going to be against everyone. Okay, so he's going to live outside of salvation history. He's not going to play a role in that. God will be at work to ensure that Ishmael becomes a great nation.

And he tells Hagar this to brace her and say it's worth going back. Go back, go through this process. You're married to Abraham. Okay, so go back to where you're supposed to be in the arrangement that it is.

It's not great, but go back. And puts her back in a place where she's going to survive. She's not gonna survive what she's doing right now. Well, how does she respond? And she called on the name of the Lord who spoke to her.

So then all of a sudden, okay, the angel of the Lord is now called the Lord. The name of the Lord who spoke to her. Occasionally, we're gonna read in the Old Testament of the angel of the Lord. Who is this?

But it's Christ. It's the second person of the Godhead. He's appearing in a visible form in a way that these people can see him and engage with him. And this is the Lord himself. And she called him the name of the Lord who spoke to her.

You are a God who sees. And this could be read both ways in the Hebrew. Also, you could do it this way. You are a God of sight, meaning a God who can be seen. Not only is he a God who sees her and knows what's going on in her life, but he's also a God who appears to her so that she may know him.

A God who sees and can be seen. And she names him and praises him. And she said, have I even remained alive here after seeing him? And it's a bit more pithy in the Hebrew. Am I still able to see after seeing him, the one who sees?

She's just amazed that she got through this encounter unscathed. As is most folks in the Bible when they come in face-to-face with the second person of the Godhead, they're amazed that they survive through this encounter because of his power and his holiness.

And therefore, the well or this spring that she was by was called Be 'er L 'chai Ro 'i. And literally, it means the well of a living one who sees me. It was named this, it was kind of a landmark moment.

God is revealed in a way that is significant. This story obviously comes back with Hagar. She tells the story. It is captured and kept by Abraham and his descendants and passed down. It's something that is significant that this is a God who can be seen and sees, that he will engage with us.

He will even come to us to deal with us. And the well is marked to remind them of that. Be 'er L 'chai Ro 'i, between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore Ishmael, according to what God said.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him. And so we find that God works through this situation. It appears that Abram and Sarai decided to kind of go around and circumvent what God intended and declared and assured them that he would do in chapter 15 and chapter 16.

They're coming up with alternative plans and that God will not let those plans dethrone him or change what he decided to do. And so we see that God is going to keep his promises. And what are some of the consequences of, what are some of the consequences of Sarai and Abram's choices here in chapter 16?

Right, there's gonna be further division in the family. Right? In later chapters, we're gonna read about that. What else happens? Yeah, they're still fighting, right? Ishmael's descendants fight everybody, including themselves, and they also have a special hatred for Isaac's descendants, don't they?

We still have the consequences today. One of those amazing moments where you realize that something that happened 4 ,000 years ago and was written down some 400 years after that is a very succinct way of describing our world today.

Who is Ishmael? His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him. What a succinct and accurate description, right? It's not a fatal description, as many Muslims today are turning to Christ by the power of the gospel and the courage of missionaries today.

So it's not, they're not an apostate race that there's no hope for. There's no such race. So that's good news, but it's still a fairly accurate observation. As we see a basic lesson, I think, from this passage of scripture, what do we see in terms of Abraham and Sarah's choices in contrast to the way that God does give them a son, a seed?

God gave them a child in a way that only he could do it. Only he could give them a son. Only he could give them a child in the way that he intended. Now, Abraham and Sarah could come up with an alternative, something that they could do, but look at the results of that.

Galatians 4 and the Contrast Between Flesh and Promise

Paul takes up this analogy and he says in Galatians 4 .22, for it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bond woman, one by the free woman, one by Hagar, one by Sarah. But the son by the bond woman was born according to the flesh, meaning by the efforts of Sarah and Abraham and Hagar to do something that they could do.

And the son by the free woman was born through the promise, through the promise. And Paul says, this is allegorically speaking, and he wants to say, let's take this up as an illustration. Let's take this up as an analogy, okay?

For these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves, she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children.

Meaning the way in which the present Jerusalem was interpreting the law, which Paul says was unlawful, by their own efforts, by their own efforts, this is what we can do to be right with God. But he says that's slavery, just like Hagar was a slave because they were doing religion by their own efforts.

Trying to relate to God by their own efforts. But the Jerusalem above is free, she is our mother. The Jerusalem above is free, he says. For it is written, rejoice, barren woman, who does not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor, for more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband.

And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. Meaning that we are born of the work of God, not by the work of human efforts. Born of grace, by the power and the promise of God. So when Paul reads the story there in Genesis 16, he sees an effective analogy.

There is doing things by human effort, which leads to bondage and slavery. Or there is waiting upon the Lord to fulfill his promise and his power, and this leads to freedom. And he wants to take Genesis 16 and apply it to the churches in Galatia and say, human effort is not the way to be saved.

Human effort has no place in the gospel. It is the power of God that saves and let us trust in him and him alone. So there's a great way to apply that chapter in the way that Paul does there in Galatians 4.

Closing Doxology and Sign-Off

All right, we're out of time. So let's go ahead and let's close with the doxology. After we do so, I want to encourage you to...