Genesis #19 - The Gospel According to Abraham #9 - "God's Way or the Highway?" (Genesis 16)

With that in mind, if you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, take them and turn with me to Genesis chapter 16.

Genesis and chapter number 16. Genesis chapter 16, and if you grabbed one of the red

Bibles we give away at the back, that's on page 11. Genesis and chapter 16, beginning at page 11.

We are continuing on in the series that we've been in the book of Genesis, looking at the life of Abraham, that we've called the

Gospel according to Abraham. And so we are picking up this afternoon in Genesis and chapter number 16.

Genesis 16, page 11 in those red Bibles. If you're able to, I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's Word.

We stand every time we read the scripture before we preach, out of reverence for God's Word. It's come from Him, and we want to demonstrate with our bodies, just as we do with our hearts, reverence for it.

So Genesis chapter 16, beginning in verse 1.

Brothers and sisters, these are God's very words. Abram's wife Sarai had not born any children for him, but she owned an

Egyptian slave named Hagar. Sarah said to Abram, since Yahweh has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave.

Perhaps through her I can build a family. And Abram agreed to what

Sarai said. So Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband

Abram as a wife for him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan ten years.

He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she saw that she was pregnant, her mistress became contemptible to her.

Then Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for my suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and when she saw that she was pregnant,

I became contemptible to her. May Yahweh judge between me and you.

Abram replied to Sarai, here, your slave is in your power. Do whatever you want with her. Then Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her.

The angel of Yahweh found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the way to shore.

He said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?

She replied, I'm running away from my mistress Sarai. The angel of Yahweh said to her, go back to your mistress and submit to her authority.

The angel of Yahweh said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.

The angel of Yahweh said to her, you have conceived and will have a son. You will name him

Ishmael, for Yahweh has heard your cry of affliction. This man will be like a wild donkey.

His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him. He will settle near all his relatives.

So she named Yahweh who spoke to her. You are El Royi. For she said, in this place have

I actually seen the one who sees me? That is why the well is called Be 'er

Lehi Royi. It is between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar gave birth to Abram's son, and Hagar bore

Ishmael to him. Dear friends, the grass withers, the flower fades, but this

Word of our God will abide forever. Let's pray, ask for the Lord's help, and then we will get to work in this passage.

Well Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your goodness and mercy to us. We thank you for all that you do for us in Christ.

And Father, we thank you that one of the great blessings we enjoy is the ministry of the Spirit, who shines light upon your

Word and helps us to understand. And so Father, we ask that you would do that even now as we open up this book and allow it to speak to us as your people.

Father, as you know, it's our custom to pray for other area churches, and this afternoon we take a moment to pray for our friends at Trail Christian Fellowship.

We thank you, Father, especially for the just smooth and sweet transition of leadership that's happened there in the last few months as Pastor Rick has retired after almost 40 years of serving you faithfully.

And we thank you for Pastor Travis, who has taken up the mantle of lead pastor there.

We thank you for him and his heart for our Valley to see Christ -honoring and Bible -focused and Spirit -empowered churches raised up throughout our

Valley. We pray for them out there and all that they are doing to honor and to glorify you.

We pray that they would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that as they do so, they would be used by your

Spirit to minister to needy men and women, boys and girls, throughout this Valley.

We pray that for them and we pray that for ourselves even now as we come to your Word. Equip us through it. Help us.

And above all, may Jesus be magnified. It's in his name that we pray, and for his sake.

Amen. Please be seated. Genesis chapter 16, and I have tagged our text this afternoon as we come to Genesis chapter 16,

God's way or the highway. God's way or the highway.

Because as we come to this chapter, that's really the choice that's going to be put before the characters in our passage, and by extension, put to us as we come to this chapter.

What do you do when you can't get what you want? Seems like a simple enough question, but it does bear thinking about.

What do you do when you can't get what you want?

I'll be honest with me, I'm the kind of person who I don't really—I don't particularly enjoy asking for things if I'm really honest.

So if I ask and you tell me no, I'm just like, well, okay then. It is what it is. For some people, that's not good enough.

They're the type who, if they don't get what they want, they grieve. They're unhappy with not getting what they want.

For some people, they would look at people like me or people like the grievers among us and say, what is wrong with both of you?

Why don't you—if you're not gonna get it, go take it. And so they will fight, kicking and clawing against the reality that they're not getting what they want.

For some others, it's, I'm gonna dig in my heels, roll up my sleeves, and listen. If it's not gonna happen, then

I'm going to make it happen. Where I come from, we have a saying, I'm going to get it by hook or by crook.

So again, I ask the question, what do you do when you don't get what you want?

It's actually quite an important question for us to consider as we come to Genesis chapter 16. You see, when

God's promises seem to be delayed or even denied, I want to ask you,

Christian, what do you do? I've said it's an important question.

I'm gonna go so far as to say it is the question that hangs over this passage as we come to it this afternoon.

So far in our study of Genesis, we've seen Abraham receive the promises of God. God has told him that he is going to be the father of a nation.

He's going to inherit this land, and through the people that come from him and through a seed that will come through him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

And it's been quite a roller coaster, I can imagine, if you've been following along in this series. We've seen some dazzling heights as Abraham trusts

God, and yes, he doubts and he has his concerns, but he puts them to one side, and he trusts in God.

We've seen some dazzling heights, but we've also seen some pretty dark lows.

As you've seen, Abraham at times be skeptical at best and downright unfaithful at worst.

Well, our last proper exposition in this series, we got to Genesis and chapter 15 and this life -or -death promise that God makes to Abram, basically saying,

I am putting, as it were, my own life on the line. If I don't do this, what? Remember Genesis 15?

There's a ceremony where animals are cut and they walk through these animals. God essentially says in that moment, if I don't do for you what

I have said, what happened to these animals should happen to me. Now, it couldn't happen to God, and that's exactly the point.

Because God is eternal, God is also faithful. So that's what we ended last time in our journey through the book of Genesis.

But as we come to Genesis chapter 16, the case is that that was then and this is now.

Yes, from that, as it were, dazzling height, now we've hit another dark low.

And so that question that I asked you comes to us again from this passage.

When God's promises seem to be delayed or even denied, what do you do?

Now, as we'll see, Abraham's circumstances here are pretty unique. I'm not saying there was a one -to -one between Abraham and us in every circumstance we face in life, but I do think that as we go through this passage and as the text unfolds, we're going to see that sometimes we can emulate

Father Abraham a little too closely for comfort. And that's especially the case when the gap between promise and reality feels about a thousand miles wide.

Again, I'll ask you my question for the afternoon. When you don't get what you want, what do you do?

Well, the reality is, life in a fallen world means we are not always going to get what we want, or at least not going to get it when we want it.

And so when those moments happen, what do we need to be reminded of as God's people?

What are the truths that we need to bear in mind, that need to hold us in the moments when we don't get what we want?

Might I suggest that part of the truth we need to bear in mind is this, that even when we seek our own way,

God is faithful to himself and to his promises to us.

That even when we don't get what we want and we get tempted to go our own way, God is faithful to himself and he is faithful to his promises to us.

Even when we seek our own way, God is faithful to himself and he's faithful to his promises to us.

That's what we're going to see in Genesis chapter 16 as we march our way through this text.

And as we do so, I will ask the question that has become the title of our sermon today, are we going to choose

God's way or the highway? Even when we seek our own way,

God is faithful to himself and to his promises to us.

For the rest of our time, I want to consider two contrasting scenes that should drive us to God and his promises.

We're just going to kind of march our way through this chapter, and as we do, we're going to see two scenes unfold which should drive us, if we understand the point of these two scenes, it should not drive us into ourselves, but it should drive us to God and to his promises.

So two contrasting scenes which should drive us to God and his promises. The first scene is actually pretty short, it only covers the first six verses, but it's a pretty loaded one and we're actually going to spend most of our time in this first scene.

So consider with me point number one, man's faithless maneuvering. Man's faithless maneuvering in verses one through six.

Man's faithless maneuvering. To pick it up with me in verse one, as the scene is set for us,

Abram's wife Sarai had not born any children for him. As we said, time has passed since the mountaintop experience of Genesis chapter 15, and with the passing of time, doubt has crept up once again.

Yes, multiple times already God has affirmed and reaffirmed the good news that Abram would indeed have a son.

So remember back in Genesis 12, God said, I will make of you a great nation. Well, if you're going to make a nation from someone, that starts with having at least one child.

In chapter 13, God said to Abraham that he was to look at the land, look at it north and south, east and west, because I am going to give to you and your offspring this land.

And in fact, Genesis 13, 16, God says, I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust of the earth, then your offspring could be counted.

Even in the last chapter, Genesis 15, 4 and 5, when Abram goes to God and says, God, if you don't do something,

I'm gonna have to give everything to my slave. And God says, no, no, no, no, no. This one will not be your heir.

Instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir. And then he tells him to go outside, is where the graphics for this series have been inspired by.

He tells him, go outside and look at the stars. If you can count them, you'll know just how many offspring you will have.

So God has reaffirmed his promise over and over and over again. But the fact that God promised a nation to a lesser child, that fact, and just knowing that fact, didn't eliminate

Abram and Sarai's doubts. If I could pause for a moment, isn't it always the case that having the promises of God, comfort that they are, and they should be a comfort to your soul, isn't always the case that just because you have the promises of God, doubts and worries and concerns don't just magically dissolve.

Isn't it the case that even though we know what the word of God says, it doesn't stop us asking questions. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we talked about what faith is.

We said that faith is knowledge, assent, and trust, which rests and receive. Well, as true as that is, isn't it the truth that sometimes simply believing is the hardest thing to do?

It's not said in our text, but that seems to be the undertone behind this. And when we struggle with not getting what we want, faith itself can become a struggle.

And if we're not careful, we're gonna see three things that Abram and Sarai, mostly Sarai, start to do in these first few verses.

When we struggle with not getting what we want, faith becomes a struggle, and if we're not careful, we're given to, first of all, focusing on our present predicaments.

Focusing on our present predicament. So the beginning of verse 1,

Moses, writing on the inspiration, starts here to show where the focus of Abram and Sarai was fixed.

Notice it doesn't say anything about God's promise. It doesn't say anything about faith in him. It just says Abram's wife,

Sarai, had not born any children for him. Moses, as the narrator, essentially is telling you this is where they're focused at this point in time.

If I can pause once again, the first step, I would argue, to dealing with not getting what you want or what you believe you should have, first step to dealing with that,

I'm gonna suggest you might not want to focus on what you don't have. Isn't it just the case as human beings that whenever we don't have something we think we should have, that's the one thing we focus on.

I see this with my son. My son is two years old. He owns more things in the house than Laura and I do combined.

But when he wants something that belongs to one of us and we don't give it to him, he can't talk so I don't know what he's thinking.

But you can see by his actions, everything else in the house, he's not focused on that anymore. He's focused on the one thing you didn't give him.

And might I suggest that no matter how old we go, sometimes we don't outgrow that trait, that we don't outgrow that tendency to focus on what we don't have.

You and I both know it's easier to focus on the negatives when you're in a rough spot, when circumstances are not what we want.

We might want to change something and it won't change anytime soon. And in those moments, our temptation will often be to bemoan what we don't have.

But for a moment, can I remind you of what you do have?

You may not have everything you want. Maybe you do have everything you want. I'm happy for you.

I know me. I know I don't. But for a moment, can

I remind you of all the things you do have? Jesus said in John chapter 14 and verse 16,

I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.

He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn't see him or know him.

But you know him because he remains with you and will be in you. You think about it.

You have the Holy Spirit that God gives you. Later on in John chapter 14 verse 27,

Jesus said, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

I do not give to you as the world gives. And so he says, therefore don't let your heart be troubled or fearful.

God gives you his Spirit. He gives you his peace. Romans 5 2 says, we have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand.

You've got access into the very presence of God. Paul can say in Romans 8 18, for I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy with the glory that is going to be revealed in us.

That's just a sampling. I just picked four. I just picked four at random. That's a sampling of all that we possess.

And at the outset of this narrative we are reminded by, we are reminded of the not so, of the subtle but not so subtle reality that we can be all too prone to look at the 1 % we don't have and to forget the 99 % we don't have.

Actually that analogy breaks down some because you don't as a Christian have 99%. As a

Christian you have 100%. You have everything. Unfortunately Abram and Sarai are not seeing the fact that they have been given the promise of God which means they actually have everything they need.

Moses would have us to get the sense that they are focused on today's problem, not tomorrow's promise.

Which then leads to another problem. Not only are they guilty of focusing on their present predicaments, but not only can we be in danger of that, secondly if we lose sight of what

God has promised, then we start trying the idea of creating our own solutions.

Creating our own solutions. The desperation of the situation leads to Sarai taking matters into her own hands.

We get a sense of how this is going to go. Look at end of verse 1. Abram's wife Sarai had not born any children for him, but she owned an

Egyptian slave named Hagar. Sarah starts cooking a plan.

And look at verse 2, because in verse 2 we see that this plan that she's going to cook is grounded not just in her present predicament, but in her view of God's providence.

Please look at verse 2. Sarai said to Abram, since Yahweh has prevented me from bearing children.

Let's stop there for a moment. The word here for prevented is a pretty strong one. It's the idea of restraining, of holding back, of hindering someone.

It's the idea if someone wants to do something and you are holding them off. And Sarah essentially says,

Yahweh, the covenant God, he has restrained, held me back.

He has actively hindered me from bearing children.

Sarai is unhappy with God because God promised, and then as it were, God didn't just fail to deliver, but in her mind

God is actively opposing getting what she wants. Providence has proved, as it were, to be bitter.

And I use that word bitter because there's another place in the Bible where someone complains about God's providence in almost the same terms.

Keep your finger or ribbon or something here in Genesis 16. Turn with me to the book of Ruth. Book of Ruth in your

Bibles. Book of Ruth, chapter number one.

If you're familiar with the story of Ruth, it starts off with this family who moved to Moab.

All three husbands, well it's three people, husband, or four people

I guess, husband, wife, two sons. The two sons marry, so now there are three marriages.

All three husbands die, and Naomi can no longer stay in Moab.

She needs to go home, and so she decides to go home. She tells her daughter's -in -law, who it's very apparent they're close, and she says to her daughter -in -law, you need to, you need to just go.

You're still young, you've got your whole life ahead of you, don't be tethered to me. One of them says,

I'll see you on the other side. One says, no, no, no, I am not leaving you.

And so they make the journey back. That's the title character of this book, the book of Ruth. She goes back to her hometown, pick it up in verse 19.

The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival, and the local women exclaimed, can this be

Naomi? But look at verse 21. Don't call me

Naomi. Naomi means comfort, or comforted.

She says, don't call me Naomi, call me Mahara, bitter.

For the Almighty has made me very bitter. I went away full, but Yahweh has brought me back empty.

Why do you call me Naomi? Since the Lord opposed me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.

In this moment, what is Naomi saying? God has actively fought against me, and that's why

I'm here. She is bitter, not just about her circumstance, but she is bitter at the providence of God in allowing, and as she sees it, even actively causing this painful circumstance.

When we don't get what we want, we have to recognize that at times, yes, the providences of God can lead to bitter circumstances for us.

I'm sorry, I'm not a health, wealth, and prosperity guy. I hate that teaching, so I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that you become a

Christian, everything is great and wonderful, you float to heaven on a cloud on beds of ease. No, that's not how this works.

I wish, I would to God that it could be the case, but it's not. And since that is the case, and at times, providence can seem bitter.

Can I remind you that though providence might seem bitter in the moment, it comes from a good hand.

That when bad things happen, or we don't get what we want, we should do our best to remember what our fathers in the faith would say.

They put it like this, God, the good creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom, upholds, directs, and arranges, and governs all things and creatures from the greatest to the least by his perfectly wise and holy providence to the purpose for which they were created.

Nothing happens, good, bad, or indifferent, that doesn't come from God's good and fatherly hand.

Now some people might object to that. Kofi, that's the last thing I want to hear. Well, I simply leave you with this.

I'm not gonna dwell here long, but I simply leave you with this. Who else's hand do you want that to be in? Do you want it in your hands?

Well, good luck. And I definitely don't want it in the devil's hands. So if given the choice, which

I'm not, but if I were given the choice, don't you want providence, even when it's bitter, to come from the hand of a good

God? Sarai apparently didn't.

And so since she recognizes, or at least she thinks she recognizes, that this is

God's providence in actively preventing her, look at verse 2. Come back with me to Genesis 16, to Sarai said to Abram, since the

Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave. Perhaps through her I can build a family.

It's a weird mix. As I read this passage, I kind of have a little document

I mark up as I read the passage and study it. I put in the margin at one point, this is a weird mix of unbelief and pragmatism.

Like I don't entirely rule out what God has said, but I don't believe him enough to fix it.

Yeah, God said I'll be a mother one day, but that's not moving to my timetable. So I'm going to go ahead and take matters into my own hands.

As Ian Duguid in his excellent book on Abraham, Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality notes, what we have here is a classic human attempt to solve a problem with man's wisdom, not

God's. And if this wasn't bad enough, the whole thing gets worse in verse 3.

So Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband

Abram as a wife for him. Sarai says,

I have the perfect solution. Apparently she picked up Hagar while she was in Egypt.

That seems to be the most natural way to understand how Hagar ended up with them. And she says, here's my slave girl.

Why don't you go ahead and marry her? Now, to us that sounds very bizarre and very weird, but in the ancient world that was actually quite a common custom.

Essentially it was kind of a built -in surrogacy system. So if you can have children, you had these female slaves, you can pass them off.

In fact, we're going to see that later on in Genesis with Jacob. So culturally this wasn't a no -no, but we have to acknowledge the way the text presents this.

Spiritually it was a big no -no. Oh, by the way, for those of you who've been reading through Genesis, did you pick up on the sense of déjà vu in this passage?

This sounds pretty familiar. Let me read verse 2 again and see if you can pick it up. Verse 3, excuse me.

So Abram, Sarai's wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife for him.

Where have we read about a woman ignoring the

Word of God, partaking in an action that involves taking something and giving it to her husband?

Oh yeah, if that sounds like Eve in the garden, it's supposed to sound like Eve in the garden.

Genesis 3 .6, so she, referring to Eve, took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it.

The words for taking and giving in this passage are the same ones used in Genesis chapter 3.

You're supposed to read this and see essentially that the heart of man is going to revert to picking its own way and dragging other people into it rather than going

God's way. By the way, in verses 2 and 3, did you notice who is absent?

Look at just, look at it in your own Bible. Look at all the verbs here. Who is absent, especially in verse 3 when

Sarai starts to act? Who's absent in this moment? God is absent.

Yahweh is absent but, conspicuous, excuse me, by His absence. Just like in the garden.

Abram doesn't escape blame here. After all, if this is like Genesis 3, hadn't

Abram heard God's Word directly? Did God tell you that this was how this was going to happen?

No. Just like Adam heard the Word of God directly and chose disobedience.

Let's not paint Sarah out too harshly here because Abram knew better.

Impatience seems to be what's driving the decision -making here. That's why the text tells us in verse 3 that this happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for 10 years.

Between when he first heard God and this moment, 10 years has passed. 10 years is a long time.

I mean, spoiler alert, he's got 15 more years of waiting to come. But at this moment, 10 years is 10 years too long.

Waiting. It's not something that comes naturally to us as human beings, is it? I fly a lot.

Flying. In fact, you're going there as well, aren't you? Shepherds Conference, yeah. I'm off to the Shepherds Conference next month.

And when you fly a lot, you learn a lot about people, especially when flights get delayed. It's so entertaining to watch.

I mean, it shouldn't be. Maybe I'm a bad person. I don't know. But it's very entertaining to watch when flights get delayed and how people respond to it.

You have the group that I like to call the Huffers and Puffers. They're not bad enough to actually say anything.

But you can see the eye rolling and the heavy sighs. And then you've got those folks for whom that's not good enough.

We're gonna get up and go ahead and berate the poor folks at the desk. When are we moving? What's happening?

Like, if they knew, they'd tell you. Leave them alone. And then you have me who's just like, this is annoying, but it is what it is.

I'm usually, that's usually my time for, good time for me to download all the music I wanted to listen to you and hopefully

I remember the Benadryl I wanted so I could sleep on the flight. Am I the only person who does that last minute? But one of the things

I've learned from that experience of sitting in enough airport waiting rooms, waiting for flights to go off, is that you learn from that experience that we moderns and postmoderns are awful at waiting.

But actually, that's not a modern problem. I mean, it's probably made worse than our day and age. But all of God's people have battled the feeling of it being too long from really the beginning of time.

And when we don't get what we want when we want, we would do well to heed some wise words.

This again from Ian Duguid. But what do you do when it seems that the desires of your heart are good and proper and yet they remain as unfulfilled as ever?

You must continue to wait for God's timing. God is not slow, but neither is he in a hurry.

God, dear friends, he moves to his own timetable and you would be wise to remember that when things aren't going the way you want.

Unfortunately, that lesson is lost on our protagonists. They're in a hurry and having already forgotten

God's providence, well, they take matters into their own hands. So Abram sleeps with Hagar and of course, beginning of verse four, she became pregnant.

I mean, they should be happy, right? They got what they wanted. God was moving too slowly. He wasn't giving me what

I wanted when I wanted, so I went and got it my own way and now we have a child. Everything worked out, right?

No. End of verse four. When she saw that she was pregnant, when she, being

Hagar, saw that she was pregnant, her mistress, Sarai, became contemptible to her.

Literally, she became low in his eyes. In her eyes, excuse me.

Sin has now led to more sin as Hagar now starts to actively disrespect her mistress.

You could almost hear how this goes. You couldn't give him a son. I could though.

Look who's in charge now. Remember, she's technically a slave but she's also a wife now.

Sarai has put herself in a world of hurt and she knows it.

Now, a few moments ago I said that this is kind of a rerun of the Garden of Eden experience.

If you remember the Garden of Eden, what happened next? If you aren't sure, let me tell you.

Shifting the blame took place. So look at verses five and six. Verse five.

Then Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for my suffering. I put my slave in your arms and when

I saw that she was pregnant, I, when she saw, excuse me, that she was pregnant, I became contemptible to her.

May Yahweh judge between me and you. Blame shifting is always such an ugly thing to watch.

And this is especially ugly to behold. I'm not gonna lie to you. I read this this week and I was freshly annoyed on Abraham's behalf.

I mean, there's a sense in which Sarai is the one, and this is, we take this narrative for what it is. Sarai is the one who made this legal.

Like I said, it was by the custom of the day. It was legal but it was a very indecent proposal. This was her idea. She was the one making moves and plotting and planning.

Like I said, let's not let Sarai off, let's not make Sarai out to be the total bad guy here because Abram was a willing participant in this too.

But is Sarai really going to say in this moment that you are responsible for my suffering?

It's not by accident. She doesn't say that God should judge. She picks the covenant name of God, Yahweh.

She says, Yahweh, the one who promised you, he should judge between me and you. Now before I got too annoyed with this narrative, the pastoral heart in me kicked in and I, for a little bit, at least empathized for a moment with Sarai here.

Because this is desperation leading to bad decisions. And let's be honest, we're in church, you shouldn't tell lies.

Who in this room is going to tell me that they make perfect decisions every time and the desperation never influences their decision -making?

I thought as much. Unless you hear this and think, he's banging on Sarah because Sarah was the wife and Sarah was a woman.

No, look at verse 6. Abram has to hold some blame too. Verse 6,

Abram replied to Sarai, here, your slave is in your power, do whatever you want with her. If Sarai is

Eve in this scenario, then Father Abram's got to be Adam in this moment.

What's he doing? Passing off the blame as well. Essentially telling her, this is your mess, you deal with it.

And deal with it, she does. Can I pause for a moment before we get to end of verse 6?

Isn't it always the case that when sinners are sinned against, they usually respond by sinning right back?

And usually they'll sin worse than the way that they were sinned against. Let's be clear,

Hagar was out of order for disrespecting her mistress and Sarai is now out of order. Look at end of verse 6, then

Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her. Sarai is now out of order for mistreating her slave to the point that she runs away.

This is drama, even the best soap writer couldn't conjure up. And in this moment, would we blame

God if God, proverbially speaking, looked at this? Of course, he knows all things beginning to end, so he's not learning anything in this situation.

But you wouldn't blame God if God spoke and said, you know what? I'm good. Like, I am not touching this with a galaxy -sized pole.

No, you know what? I'm fine. But aren't you glad that God doesn't operate that way?

I mean, God would be just, just, you know what? You've created, you've made your bed, you've got to lie in it.

But aren't we glad that God doesn't operate that way? Sure, man can try and succeed at maneuvering faithlessly, but we can be thankful for point number two,

God's fateful interventions. God's fateful intervention. Like I said, this second half actually moves quite quickly.

So this situation has gotten bad. Sarai has so mistreated

Hagar that she runs away. But as we'll see,

God starts to intervene, and he intervenes in three stages. And these three stages are going to sound familiar because I think we can all argue that at various points in our lives, this is how

God has dealt with us. When we don't get what we want, and we mess up by seeking our own way,

God begins the work of restoration by, first of all, meeting us where we are. By meeting us where we are, verses 7 and 8.

So pick it up in verse 7, the angel of Yahweh found her, that's Hagar, by a spring in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.

Shur was a border region between southwest Canaan, northwest Egypt. You can probably pick up what's happening here.

She's Egyptian. She's going home. And I remember, she's pregnant too.

We're not told how long it's been since she was, no, since she found out she was pregnant in this moment. But think about this.

In the ancient world, women generally had very few protections. How bad must it have been for this female slave, who is pregnant by her master, with no rights and with no protections, to cross the wilderness just to get away?

Whatever Sarai was doing must have been horrific. Well, Abram and Sarai might not have known where Hagar was, but God did.

Sure, up to this point, God was barely a footnote in Abram and Sarai's thinking, but aren't we glad that God doesn't need an invitation to move?

Aren't we glad that God doesn't really have to take into account whether you want him in a situation or not? And so God starts to intervene by meeting

Hagar where she is. And again, the parallels between this and Genesis 3 just keep on coming.

Think about this. When Adam and Eve ran from God, what did God do? He asked them a question.

Look at me at verse 8. He said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?

Again, did God not know the answer to that question? Of course he did. God knew the answer.

The answer wasn't for his benefit. The answer was for Hagar's benefit. And don't sleep on the fact that God doesn't just call her

Hagar. He says, Hagar, slave of Sarai. When she was being disrespectful to her mistress, she was not acting like her slave, even though that's who she was.

And so what does God do even in asking the question? Reminds her, this is who you are. You are out of line.

God doesn't minimize or sugarcoat or redefine Hagar's sin, and he doesn't minimize or sugarcoat or redefine when it comes to your own sin.

Think about this. The Bible makes it very clear in multiple places. God will not restore that which is not clearly confessed. Kofi, why do you see confession in this passage?

Look at the end of verse 6. She replied, I am running away from my mistress,

Sarai. She acknowledges that Sarai is still her mistress.

As she acknowledges what God says about her and she affirms it, God starts to move again.

And not only is he meeting us where we are, but he blesses us in our darkest moments.

So verse 9, the angel of Yahweh said, go back to your mistress and submit to her authority.

There's a restoration of order here. Three times in verses 10, excuse me, two times, excuse me, in verses 10 through 12.

Verse 10, the angel of Yahweh said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring and they will be too many to count.

The angel of Yahweh said to her, you have conceived and will have a son. You will name him Ishmael, for the

Lord has heard your cry of affliction. Isn't it interesting that the same promise that was bestowed on Abram is now bestowed on Hagar?

By the way, this is the only time in Genesis a promise is directly spoken to a woman. Never spoken to Sarai, never spoken to Rebekah, only spoken to Hagar.

By her association with the covenant people of God, she is now an unworthy beneficiary of the blessing of that covenant.

So God tells her she's going to have a son, Ishmael, God has heard, related to another name that you probably know better in the

Bible, Samuel. Samuel is the active form, God hears. God hears, this is

God has heard. And she names him this because, she's going to name her son this because God has heard her cry.

By the way, that's the same language used in Exodus chapter 3 when God says to Moses, go back to Egypt because I've heard the groanings of my people and I have heard their misery.

Same language. You see, God is not doing something new here.

God is simply being the merciful God that he is. If I can pause for a moment.

Even for those of us who haven't sinned like Hagar has, but nonetheless find ourselves dealing with bitter providence and tough situations.

Can I encourage you that God knows your suffering? Remember what we said about providence?

Not a thing happens that he's just finding out about. He didn't have to, you know, as it were, run a

APB looking for Hagar. He didn't have to go looking around and knock on doors to find

Hagar. God knew exactly where she was in her moment of suffering. And God knows where you are in your moment of suffering.

Come back to our text. It's interesting that Hagar receives this blessing.

It doesn't mean that life will be easy for her son. Verse 12, this man will be like a wild donkey. He's essentially going to—the idea is she's going to be a nomad.

He's not going to have any fixed residence. He's not exactly gonna have a smooth relationship with people, but at least he won't die.

He will still yet live, and he lives under the blessing of God. Hagar learns this and she responds to God's salvation, if we can use that phrase, to God's deliverance, to God's restoration with worship.

Verse 13, so she named Yahweh who spoke to her, you are El Royi. For she said in this place, have

I actually seen the one who sees me? And apparently this story becomes so well known that the well that the one who sees me.

God meets with Hagar where she is. He blesses her in her darkest moment.

And so the story ends, verses 15 and 16, with restoring the seemingly unredeemable.

Restoring the seemingly unredeemable. Can we all agree so far? This situation is just horrible on multiple levels.

It's sordid and it's a mess, and yet God has stepped in to a situation he didn't even create, if you will.

And he has made this right. So verse 15, Hagar gave birth to Abram's son, and Abram named his son whom

Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when he bore, when

Hagar, excuse me, bore Ishmael to him. She returns home and God fulfills her promise, not just to Abram and Sarai, but to Hagar.

And she has this son. For now at least, and let's be clear, this story is far from over.

We will come back to the melodrama that is the Abraham household. But for now, restoration has taken place.

A restoration that at points seemed impossible. That's where our story ends.

Now, some of you say, wait a minute, Kofi, I thought this series was called The Gospel According to Abraham. Where's the gospel in all this?

This just seems like a heaping mess. Well, it is a heaping mess, let's not tell lies. But think of it this way.

Who is the only faithful person in this narrative? Can't be

Sarai, she basically gave Machiavelli a run for her money with all her scheming and planning. It can't be

Abram. He basically like gave up the ghost and let this all happen. And then when it happened, it was like, you deal with it.

Can't be Hagar. I mean, she rebelled against the authority of her mistress. She had no business doing that.

No one in this narrative comes off squeaky clean. And that's the point.

And yet how does God respond to Abram and Sarai? Does he kick

Abram and Sarai to the curb for their Adam and Eve -like performance? Does God just kick

Hagar to the side for her disrespect and disloyalty? Before you answer that question, does

God deal with you that way? How many times, you may not have done something as boneheaded as this scheme, but how many times have you tried to seek what you perceive to be

God's blessing using carnal means? How many times have you messed up and then rather than owning it, you've tried to pass blame and make it somebody else's fault?

How many times have we complained about something we didn't get and begrudged the providence of God?

We might not have done it as brazenly as they did. But faith family, if you read this and you don't see at times your own heart and your own attitudes in this passage,

I'm going to go ahead and say you've missed the point of Genesis 16 entirely. Here's how we get to the gospel from this passage.

When we are faced with our own sins and our own rebellions and our own failures, you coming up with your own schemes and ideas to get

God's favor just doesn't work. It is only the obedience of Christ, His obedience to God's commands,

His faithfulness to the promises of God, His all -satisfying death. Christian, it is only

Jesus who can cleanse us and wash us and make us pure.

I know we're all in church. I would never want to presume that just everybody who is here is spiritually here, if you get what

I mean. For some of you, maybe the response to this message is you're hearing this, you realize that sounds like me.

Again, I don't presume to know the state of anybody's heart. Maybe you're watching this later on. And the answer or the response from this passage is

I need to repent of trying to make it my own way. That I need to give up trying to get on the highway of my own achievements, and I need to trust

God. And maybe you're here, you are. For most of you, you're here and you are believers.

And yet the same age -old problem of the human heart remains. When we don't get what we want, we try and finagle our own way, and we'll complain at God, and we'll begrudge

His providence. And what you need to learn is don't begrudge His providence. Trust His promises. And even in the moments when we don't, because Abram had the promises of God, and he still failed in this passage.

Ultimately, when we don't get what we want, and our sinful hearts move us to choose the highway over God's way.

Faith family, it is only in Jesus that our sins, and our rebellions, and our failures can and are made.

And Father, we thank you for that reality. We thank you that the only way in which the failures of the past, our lack of faith, and our lack of trust in you can be dealt with once and for all, is by returning to the cross.

Father, we thank you that we have in Jesus, one who obeyed perfectly, one who trusted your promises perfectly, one who believed you all the way to the cross.

And His righteousness, His perfect record of obedience, of trust, and of faith is credited to us, so that even in the moments where we don't trust

Him, we still have, as the

Word of God says, an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. Father, I pray for anyone here who's under the sound of my voice who doesn't know you, and I ask that you would use this word to bring them to a place of repentance, repentance from their own self -righteousness, their own attempts to earn favor with you, and bring them to a place of faith, where they rest and receive your promise of salvation in Jesus.

Father, help us that we would choose your way instead of the highway. Help us that even when we don't get what we want, we would remember that you are faithful to your promises.

And we may not see it now, but we will see it one day. For we ask it in Jesus' name, and for His sake.