Genesis 16 El Roi - The God Who Sees Me

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Good morning, everybody. I'm excited to be able to share a story this morning that has blessed me and has given me a deeper understanding of who God is, and that's my prayer for all of us today.

Human Worth, Pain, and the Question of Whether God Cares

We live in a crazy world, don't we? I mean, if you heard the news last night or this morning, what insanity when you look at what's going on in our own country and around the world. It's depressing, let's face it, and life is a challenge.

And I'm going to guess that some of you are facing some big challenges in your life. I know in this room there's some heartache and there's some pain and there's some sadness and there's some depression, because that's part of the human experience.

If you care about anything, you're going to be hurt, right? You're going to experience pain. I think a deep question that we all ask is, does God care? Does God know my pain? Does God know what I'm going through?

I meet and get to minister to young people every week who feel like God doesn't care, and they wonder where God is at. It's amazing that I rarely run into a teenager in my ministry at Youth for Christ who tells me that they're atheist.

That is so rare. They believe that there's a creator God, but they feel like this God doesn't care about who they are. I get to meet with young people at a place called the Arc for Youth. It's basically a crisis shelter for teens who go and stay there while they kind of sort things out and try to help that young person in whatever the crisis is that they're going through.

I asked the kids in my group one week, how much is your life worth? It was quiet. They were thinking about it. How much is your life worth? I said, let me put it another way. If you were kidnapped, what would be your ransom price?

Again, it was kind of quiet. They were kind of thinking about that. One young girl raised her hand and she said, $2 ,000. It broke my heart. I thought, wow, that's what she thinks she's worth, or that's what someone would pay to set her free.

I'm so glad I got to tell her that Jesus said, I have come to give my life as a ransom, and that her life was more valuable than all of the riches on this earth, because Jesus bought and paid for her with his precious blood at the cross so that she could become a daughter of God.

So my question to you is, what is your worth as a human being? Does God know what you're going through? And does he care? I think most of you would say, yeah, he knows what I'm going through and he cares.

I want to introduce you to a young lady this morning who I am convinced felt like God did not care, and that her life was worth maybe 30 shekels of silver, and that would have been about it, because that would have been the going price probably for her life at that time in what she grew up in.

And her name is Hagar, and maybe you've read her story before. Turn with me to Genesis chapter 16, and we're going to just read the first part of her story, and then after our worship time, we're going to kind of explore her life and see if this question can be answered as far as what is our worth to God?

I remember as a teenager feeling like I was a nobody, like my life didn't count for anything. And I believed that God was real, but I didn't think God could care about me. Who was I, right? I'm so glad at the age of 20 I learned the gospel and I learned the price that was paid to set me free.

Hagar didn't know this though. So follow along with me, Genesis chapter 16.

It says,.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant, it may be that I shall obtain children by her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.

And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, May the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace.

And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked at me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please.

Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. You think of this young Egyptian maidservant, called a servant here. And what just happened to her? What even brought her to the place of living with Abram and Sarai?

To kind of put yourself in her shoes. The pain that she is going through at this point, does God care? So, one thing that I have learned in my 38 years of walking with Christ, is that it's often at our lowest and saddest times, that God comes to us and comforts us in the most amazing way.

That it's during those tough times that God can reveal Himself to us, unlike when everything's going just great. And so, I think God allows those hard, tough times in our lives to draw us to Himself. And I believe that if He didn't bring those to us, most of us would probably just coast through life.

And so, nobody likes those times and that pain, but there's a purpose for it. Hey, let me pray before the band comes up, and then we'll come back and see what happens with Hagar. Father, just thank You that we can come to Your throne of grace this morning.

Thank You that You love us. You do love us, Father. I think most of us know the answer to that question, but when it comes to day-to-day, Father, sometimes even though we know it in our head, we don't act upon it in our heart, Father, in trusting You and seeking You.

And I just pray that You would teach us something amazing about who You are through the story of Hagar. Pray, hallowed be Your name in this place this morning, that You would shine forth Your beauty and Your glory.

I thank You that You do know each of our names. You know our struggles. You know all that we're going through, and that You do love us, and You do care about us, and You want to see us through it, Father.

And that You have a plan for each one here in this place, just like You did for Hagar. And so, Father, we all just pray together, come and meet with us in this place. May Your Spirit work and move in our lives.

I pray that You would minister to every individual here, the children in the children's programs, that You would minister to them and help them to know how precious they are in Your sight, that You would speak to us through the songs that we're about to sing and enjoy, that we could sing in the Spirit and with understanding, and that You would clearly speak to us through Your Word this morning, that You would give us revelation of who You are.

We love You and thank You so much that we can gather together here, Father, this morning for our church family, and that we are Your sons and daughters, and that You're our perfect, loving, heavenly Father, that You are our mighty Lord and Savior Jesus.

We love You, we praise You, and thank You this morning. Amen. Amen. I want to start by thanking Don for giving me this opportunity. And I'm excited about sharing. I don't think this is on. I'm lit up.

I am? Oh, okay. That's what happens when you're almost 60, you start losing your hearing, you know? For me, it felt like it wasn't even on. So good, good. A little humor to get us going here. You can laugh at the old guy, okay?

So, Don, thank you for giving me this opportunity. And I love God's Word. We have such a treasure in this revelation that God has given us. I pray that each of us can realize what an incredible gift this Word is.

It's the revelation of God, and He speaks to us through it. And I'm so thankful for that. I'm thankful that God has called me to be one of His ambassadors to lost and hurting kids. I want to thank you for your prayers for Youth for Christ and our ministry.

I want to thank Recast for supporting us as one of your missionaries. And I know someone texted me this morning to say that they were praying for me. And I know this is my almost 30 years now of serving at Youth for Christ.

And I know that one of the reasons I am still there is because of God's people praying for us. And we so desperately need that. It was a good week at Youth for Christ, and it was a hard week. Saw some kids respond to our message Thursday night in the Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home who gave their lives to Christ.

That's a good week. Thank you. Yeah, praise God. It was a tough week of meeting Hagar's, meeting young ladies who feel alone and like no one cares. And when you hear their stories, you understand how they could feel that way.

And I can understand why they might believe that God does not love them. Because why would God let this happen to me? Sadly, we live in a fallen world. And God gave human beings a free will. And oftentimes we choose our own will and people get hurt and we hurt ourselves and we hurt our loved ones even unintentionally.

Young lady named Caitlin in one of our ministry areas threatening to take her own life this week. The police, of course, we called the police and they came to her home and after that she ran. And it reminds me of Hagar running, trying to escape.

Please remember Caitlin in your prayers this week. She's hearing about the love of Jesus and what he did for her, but she's having a hard time grasping onto it. Have you ever tried to put yourself in someone else's shoes to try to understand what they're going through, what they might be feeling?

That's a really good thing to try to do. And it will help you to understand and it will help you to have more compassion on people, especially as you begin to learn more of their story because lots of times we simply do not know their story.

God is so amazing in his word what he chose to put in there in this book that he would devote a whole chapter in his word about a runaway slave girl.

That's amazing.

I think because Hagar in the eyes of the world, she was a nobody. I kind of want to explore and think about her life a little bit. And you can see I love that graphic that Haley chose to put up there.

I think that was her idea because I didn't send that in. I wonder if anybody can say that name up there, that Hebrew name properly. So hopefully at the end of this message you'll know how to say that name and you'll know what it means.

And it's one of the names of God in the Bible. It's in our chapter today. But I want you to try to put yourself in Hagar's sandals, if you will, okay? So let's go to Genesis 16 and we'll take this a verse at a time.

So if you were an investigator and you only had verse one to go on as far as who is this Hagar, let's see what you could come up with about her life.

It says,.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. So we can learn several things about who Hagar is simply from this one verse. Number one, Hagar is a she.

So we know what gender she is. She's a female. I'm back in this time and not that far off. And even in some cultures today, women are second class citizens. Even in some cultures, people hope for a boy because they see girls as less valuable.

How crazy is that? She grew up in a culture that was male dominated and that males were valued and held more important than females. And so she had that coming against her, that feeling of I'm not valuable.

I'm not as important as others. She was Egyptian. So, I mean, you know your geography, right? Northern Africa, Egypt comes up quite a bit in the Bible. And we actually hear about it in the news even today.

But she was no longer living in Egypt. She was living in Canaan somewhere because with Abram and Sarai, we're going to talk about how she came to live with them for a moment because I think that's really significant to this story and to kind of discover what's going on in her life and how she might be feeling.

So she's a foreigner living with foreign people. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you were in another country and everybody's talking a language that you don't understand and all of a sudden they start laughing and they look at you.

You wonder what are they saying, right? I've only been to Mexico once and it was only for one day, but I definitely felt like a foreigner. I cannot speak Spanish. But there's been plenty of places where I felt like a foreigner before, if you can relate, even here in America.

She was called a servant here in our text. The King James Version calls her a handmaid. I looked this word up in the Strong's Concordance to see what the Hebrew word meant and it was actually the word that they would use for a female slave.

Now, I don't believe that was her status living with Abram and Sarai. Because if you read further in her story, you can go to chapter 21 and you can see where they actually end up leaving the tribe of Abraham.

I think that she was free to leave at any time if she so choose. But she was a servant. We know she was Egyptian, so think of how she came to live with Abraham and Sarai. I'm switching back and forth.

Sarai and Abram later become Sarah and Abraham. You guys know the story, right?

Yes, okay.

If we were to look up and read the story in Genesis chapter 12, Abram and Sarai, they were nomadic herdsmen. And so they lived in tents and they went wherever there was grass to feed their livestock and they had a lot of livestock.

They were very prosperous in their farming. And famine came into the land of Canaan and they went down to Egypt because they heard that there was still green grass down there to feed their livestock. And Sarai apparently was a beautiful woman because Abram said to Sarai, hey, you're really nice to look at.

And I'm afraid when we get to Egypt, somebody's going to see how beautiful you are and they're going to kill me and take you as their wife. So tell everybody that you're my sister. And so that's what they did.

And some of the king's counselors saw her out and about and they went to the king and said, oh, we saw this woman. She is so beautiful. And the king said, go and get her and bring her to my palace. And as far as the king knew, hey, she was Abram's sister.

And it says that the king gave Abram livestock and silver and gold and male and female servants. And that word female servant is the same word for slave. And so from that, we can gather that Hagar was most likely a slave in Egypt.

That she grew up in slavery and somehow she served in the king's palace. That she was a piece of property to be given to someone at the king's will. And she is given to Abram and Sarai. Well, to Abram, because Sarai is now in the palace.

But God comes and helps Abram in his failure and warns the king, don't you touch her. She is the wife of one of my prophets. And so the king lets her go and tells Abram, you better get out of here, you know.

And so they come back to Canaan, but they have Hagar with her. She probably couldn't speak Hebrew. You know, she probably had to learn this new language, these new customs. She was, you know, apparently old enough to have a baby.

She could have been a teenager. At this point, we don't know what her age was. Growing up in Egypt, she would have learned about the Egyptian gods. And I did a little research on the gods that they worshipped back in that time, the best they can figure.

They had the sun god, the moon god, the river god, the war god, the god of the earth, the god of the rivers, the god of the seas, the god of... And I thought, maybe I'll try to pronounce some of their names.

Are you kidding me? I'm not even going to try that. You know, the whole thing confused me. I can't imagine how confused she was about who God was.

Right?

And apparently, none of the gods of Egypt really cared that much about her because things had not been well for her in her life. So she comes to live with Abram and Sarai, who worshipped this god that they call Elohim, who they say is spirit.

This god is invisible. He's the creator of the heavens and the earth. And this god is holy and pure. And this god is loving and merciful. And so she, I can imagine that she is trying to learn, could this be real?

Could this god be the true god? Or are the gods of Egypt the ones that I need to try to keep happy? So I would guess that she was also a very confused young lady. Religion can be so confusing, right? I mean, I'm going to guess some of you grew up in the church and, you know, America, they still refer to as a Christian nation.

I don't know if I agree with that definition so much. But even today, I see kids that are so confused about, you know, is Allah God? What about Buddha? You know, what about Confucius? All these, you know, I'm a Wiccan, you know.

Kids are more confused than ever about who God is. And they're not, it's not like generations past where they're actually learning who God is from a young age. I meet, literally meet kids who have never really learned who Jesus is.

They don't even know that he once walked this earth. Very sad. So there's a problem brewing here. And it comes down, this statement in verse one, where it says, Sarai, Abram's wife, had born him no children.

About 10 years prior to this, God had made a promise to Abram and Sarai that they were going to have a son and that their descendants would number more than the stars in the sky. And so they expected to have a son.

They expected to have children. And day after day after day after day, time was ticking and they were growing older and no child was coming. And Sarai gets impatient, waiting on God. And she comes up with her own plan.

And you know,.

When we take our own plan, often things don't turn out so well. Sarai is taking charge here. And I looked up her name. I wasn't even sure how to say it. The best I can figure is it's Sarai.

But I did.

I looked it up in my Strong's Concordance again. And the definition of Sarai says it comes from a word sar. And I know I'm pronouncing that right. And sar means ruler, master, chief, lord, someone in charge.

She's kind of living up to her name, isn't she? Made me think of kind of this struggle that we have as believers. Like we have two natures. We have the old earthly nature and then we have the born again nature.

God's spirit living in us. We're a new creation in Christ Jesus. And yet we struggle. Are we going to function out of the old realm and out of the natural man? Or are we going to function out of the spirit and the spiritual?

When we function out of the natural and we're not seeking to be led by the spirit, oftentimes it turns out badly. Fortunately, Sarai learned her lesson eventually. And God changed her name to Sarah, which means princess.

And you think about what a princess means. Princess is royalty. But a princess is under the authority of the king, right? When she learned to trust God and recognize him as Lord of her life.

And king,.

God changed her name to Sarah. I think that's significant. And ladies, you are princesses.

How about that?

You're a daughter of the king. That's pretty amazing. So men, treat your wives like princess, all right? So Sarai has this plan. She's like, Abram, I want you to take Hagar as your wife, sleep with her.

And, you know, hopefully she'll get pregnant. She'll have a baby. And then that baby will become my child and will become our heir. They had a custom in their day. And, you know, I looked in a couple of study Bibles to see if they had any notes on this verse to help us understand it a little bit.

And there was a note in the Life Application Study Bible and it said this. It said, Sarai gave Hagar to Abram as a substitute wife, a common practice of the time. A married woman who could not have children was shamed by her peers and was often required to give a female servant to her husband in order to produce an heir.

The children born to the servant woman were considered the children.

Of the wife.

So this was, you know, an accepted custom of their day. Did that make it right? If something is a custom and it's seen okay in the eyes of our culture, does that necessarily mean that it's good and right and true?

It can even be legal. I could stop at the party store on my way home and I could buy a fifth of whiskey and I could go home and I could drink that whole bottle and I could get drunk. There's no law against it, right?

But would that be good? Just because our culture says something is okay or there's no law against it in our land, does that make it okay? Or do we as the people of God have a different standard that we seek to live our lives by?

We do, don't we? We have a different standard. It's the Word of God. And it's the Spirit of God. It's the will of God that we want to seek. That is the safe and true path is seeking God's will and God's plan.

I think Jesus was very wise when He gave us the pattern of prayer that the third prayer request He said that we should pray is your will be done. And that should be a prayer that we are constantly praying.

Well, let's look and see how Abram responds. Verse 2 -4, And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant. It may be that I shall bear children by her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian,.

Her servant,.

And gave her to Abram, her husband as wife. And he went into Hagar and she conceived. So, how did Abram do? He do good? He should have been a man of God. He should have said, No, God promised us a son.

And I know this is not how He intended it to come to pass. We're not going to do this, Sarai. And I'm sure he must have thought of the promise. But I wonder what happened. I think he looked at Sarai and he thought, She's pretty.

She's young. Not a bad idea. And he followed the flesh instead of the Spirit. Men, how are we doing? Are we following the Spirit? Are we letting our flesh rule? Are we seeking holiness? Do you think Abram prayed about this?

Like, Father, what should I do? This is Sarai's plan. Is this how you have planned it?

Show me the way.

Do you think he would have known the way? I think he would have known it very clearly. That God would have whispered through his spirit and Abram's spirit. No, Abram. I'm going to have Sarai give birth to a child for you.

Be patient and wait for my promise. But he went the way of the flesh. Look at verse 5. Well, let's finish verse 4. And he went to Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.

Why?

Because Hagar at this point had been living with them long enough that she understood what was going on. And she knew that Sarai was going to take her baby from her and make it her own. And moms, how would that go over?

If you got pregnant and somebody said, that child is mine. You're going to give birth to it and then that child is going to call me mom, not you. You're going to just continue to serve in the house. That would not be good, would it?

That would be very bad. So you can understand how Hagar is feeling. And she already felt like nobody loved her, nobody cared about her. The gods don't care about her. Now she's being used. She's just a piece of property.

She was given to Abram and Sarai as a servant. She was a slave in Egypt. Now she's given to Abram. Does she have much choice in the whole matter? And now she's pregnant and she knows what's up. It's no wonder that she begins to despise Sarai.

Look at verse 6,. But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your servant is in your power. Do with her as you please. Then Sarai dealt harshly with her and she fled away. Notice how selfishness brings conflict, right?

The first time I read this story, I'm like, now wait a minute. She's mad at Abram. Whose plan was it to begin with, right? It was Sarai's plan. Now Abram should have been a man of God and said no, but he didn't.

And now there's consequences. You see our human tendency to always shift blame and not take responsibility, right? It goes all the way back to our first parents in the Garden of Eden. When they disobeyed God and they ate the forbidden fruit and God came to Abram and said, Adam, what have you done?

What did Adam do? Eve gave it to me and I ate. So he blames Eve. God comes to Eve. What have you done? Who's she blaming on? Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and the serpent has no legs to stand on.

There's my one joke for today. And we've been shifting blame ever since, haven't we? We need to take responsibility for our own actions and humble ourselves and confess and make things right when we know we have done wrong.

And I'm so glad for the atoning sacrifice that has taken away the sins of the world that when we sin, we can confess it to God and He promises to forgive us and take it away. I'm so thankful for that promise.

Oh, what a mess sin makes of our world. Oh, what a mess sin can make of our families. What a broken world we live in because of disobedience. If only we could follow the will and the plan and the Word of God, what a transformation could take place in our world.

Amen. Oh, please pray for our nation. Pray for our world. Pray that God would sweep this globe with a revival because I believe that He can still do it. And I think that the nations are ripe for it. I think our nation is ripe for it.

So many people complain about our leaders. If we spent half the time praying for our leaders that we do complaining, I think we could see some change in our nation. And I just challenge you, family, I know you pray.

Don't neglect to pray for our nation and the surrounding nations of the world and that the Gospel will continue to spread because He is still saving and rescuing lost souls. Well, things get so bad for Hagar, look what happens.

Verse 6, she fled from her. She ran away. For Hagar, this was like suicide. They lived out in the wilderness. They didn't live in town. She couldn't call anybody down in Egypt, hey, can you send me some money for a bus ticket?

I mean, to get... And when we read the story, we see she was trying to head back to Egypt. And why would she even want to go back there? I don't know. But where is she going to go? She's pregnant, probably a teenager, probably hurting.

She heads out into the wilderness and from where they were to Egypt, deserts, wild animals, evil and wicked men who would hide out and prey on caravans coming through. Can you imagine what her fate is going to be?

She's carrying what supply she can, that's it. She's going to die. And she probably is so hurting that at that point, she doesn't care. But you know what? God often comes to us at our lowest, desperate times.

And this is a desperate time for Hagar. I have to say that it's been... You know, when I go through struggles and pains in life, that's often when God moves in my life the most and I realize my greatest dependence for Him.

And so let your sorrows, let your pain drive you to God, not away from God. But Hagar, she just didn't know. She didn't know Jesus who says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

She did not know Jesus.

She did not know Yahweh, who Jesus is.

Yahweh.

She didn't know Him.

She's alone out there thinking nobody cares. Hagar's in for a big, big surprise. This is the best part of the story. All right, look at verse 7. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, a spring on the way to shore.

Who found her? The angel of the Lord. This is very significant. If you look at your Bible, Lord is in capital letters. That does not mean Master. It does not mean Lord. It means Yahweh. Some might call that name Yehovah or Jehovah.

Scholars aren't even sure how it's pronounced because in the Hebrew, it's YHWH and there's no vowels in it. And the Jews wouldn't say it because it was too sacred. And so from generation to generation, they would substitute the word Adonai, Lord, for it.

And so the translators of almost all of our English Bibles have chosen to follow that same. And but anytime you see that in capital letters, that's Yahweh. That's the self-existent one. That's what that word means.

And this is the first time in the Bible. So that's significant too that you see this phrase, the angel of the Lord. You know, angel basically means messenger. In fact, it's translated 98 times in the Old Testament, this word for angel as messenger.

It's translated 111 times angel. But this was just no ordinary angel of the Lord as we're going to find out. But even if it was, if it was just an angel, right? Angels only come to important people like kings and prophets and the mother of the Son of God.

Why would an angel come to this lowly, nobody, servant girl? But if we jump ahead and look at verse 13, we would clearly see she spoke to the one who had been speaking to her and she recognized this being as God Himself.

The John MacArthur Study Bible had a good note on this. This phrase, the angel of the Lord. It says this special individual spoke as though he was distinct from Yahweh, yet also spoke in the first person as though he were indeed to be identified as Yahweh Himself.

With Hagar recognizing that in seeing this angel, she had seen God, verse 13. Others had the same experience and came to the same conclusion. The angel of the Lord, this phrase does not appear again after the birth of Christ.

And so this phrase and in this context, this angel of the Lord is identified as the pre-incarnate Christ. That this was Jesus coming to her. This was Yahweh Himself coming to this nobody servant girl.

And I love this part of the story because we're all Hagars when it comes right down to it. We all often feel lost and alone and where is God? Does He care about me? And God puts this story in the Word for us and He wants us to get it that this wasn't a queen or a prophet or this was a runaway former slave girl, pregnant and lost and alone.

And He comes to rescue her. He knew what was going on with her just like He knows what's going on with us. I love Psalm 139 and I would really encourage you to read that today.

It says,.

When I sit, you see me. When I stand, you see me. Before I even say a word, behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You understand my thoughts. You hedge me in behind and before. You laid your hand upon me.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? And then He names all of these places and He says, Even if I go over the farthest seas, even there your hand shall lead me. Because the reality is that the presence of God, it surrounds us wherever we go.

He is the ever-present One. Hebrews 4 .13 says that there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we belong. He sees you. He knows what you're going through.

He knows your pain. He knows your situation. And He loves you and He's waiting. He waits for us to come to Him in our heartache. He loves us with an everlasting love. The cross cries out His love. The shed blood that Jesus poured out for us cries out His love.

He loves you with an everlasting love. And He comes to Hagar. He comes to her with counsel and revelation. Those are two things that God wants to bring to us every day. Counsel and revelation. He wants to bring guidance and direction into our lives because He loves us so much.