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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 16, hold your place at verse 7. Title of today's message is The Other Woman at the Well. You'll understand that title hopefully as we go along.
We are continuing today our study of Genesis 16 which began last week and you may remember the title of last week's message was What a Mess because the entire scenario is really just one bad misstep after another.
The whole event is based on human wisdom, apart from God's wisdom, lack of patience and a desire to adopt the cultural norms rather than resting in the promise of God. And you'll remember as I noted last week, at no time in the narrative does Abram stop and say let's seek the Lord in this.
Instead, it says he listened to the voice of his wife who had given him her handmaiden as a surrogate to produce a child. Well today we're going to examine the events which follow that drama, the drama between Sarai and Hagar.
We left off last week where Sarai had become heavy handed with Hagar. In fact the text says that she was mistreating her and if you remember I mentioned that the text uses the same language as the taskmasters in Egypt when they mistreated the Israelites.
This same language of mistreatment is being used of Sarai and Hagar. Sarai mistreated Hagar and so Hagar runs for home. Hagar is from Egypt. It tells us she is the Egyptian handmaiden probably procured during the time where Abram had gone to Egypt because of the famine in the land and he had received for his wife who he said was his sister a handsome dowry and among that was animals and servants and certainly among them would have been this young girl named Hagar.
Well in today's text we see Hagar having run from her mistress, running from the mistress mistreatment that she was receiving at the hands of Sarai and she finds herself alone in the wilderness and she has an encounter with God.
We're going to study this encounter. We're going to learn about a new figure who comes on the scene, a figure known as the angel of Yahweh and we're going to learn about who this figure truly is. But before we do we need to read the text.
So let us stand and give honor and reverence to the word of God as we read verses 7 -16. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur and he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?
She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.
And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold you are pregnant and shall bear a son and you shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man.
His hand shall be against everyone and everyone's hand against him and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you are a God of seeing. For she said, truly here I have seen him who looks after me.
Therefore, the well was called Bir Lahai Roi. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Father in heaven, I pray, oh God, that you would be with me as I preach, that you would keep me from error and that you would, Lord, embolden me to preach without fear. I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to hear your word, to see in this text the loving kindness of God, the benevolence of God, mercy in the wilderness, Lord.
And, Father, I pray that you would be with those who do not know you. For Lord, certainly there are those in the room who do not know you. And, Lord, I pray that you might in the midst of their lostness reach them, open their hearts and draw them unto yourself.
In Jesus' name, amen. One of the most familiar scenes in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ comes in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. In fact, if I simply remind you of a little bit of the story, your minds, especially if you've been in church for any length of time, your minds will probably begin to put the story together.
It was the story of the woman at the well. Jesus is on his way from Judea to Galilee and he says to his disciples, I must needs go through Samaria. That's the King James rendering, must needs go through Samaria.
And there he comes to a well and he meets a woman. The two have an interaction which includes some very powerful statements, some statements which we remember all the time. Jesus is in that moment when he says that God desires us to worship him in spirit and truth, remember?
That's in that particular context. And so we have a lot of powerful interactions that happen in that narrative. But one of the things that often is brought out, and I think it's true and right to bring it out, is the tenderness that Jesus displays to the woman at the well.
He was willing to address her sin, absolutely. You'll remember that. You have four husbands and the man you're with is not your husband. That's bold. I mean, that's hard to hear when you're the person on the other end of that recounting of your life's transgressions.
But Jesus is still tender with her. He talks with her as a loving savior and he does draw her to himself with his kind and loving words. Even in the midst of calling out her sin, there is still a tenderness from our savior to this woman who finds herself.
And I don't want to go too much into John 4 because I don't have time. We've got to stick with Genesis 16. But there's some things that we learn about that woman. Not only is she a woman who's had many husbands, she's a woman who's by herself at the well.
Most of the women at that time would go in the morning. They'd go with other women and it was a social affair. She's by herself demonstrating. She's probably outcast. She probably doesn't have a lot of friends.
She probably is on the outskirts of this particular situation. And here Jesus comes to her. I must need to go because I'm going to have this interaction with this one person. And this one person is going to become an evangelist who goes back to her city and brings people to me and will be saved through the administration of tenderness to this woman.
His words are instructive, patient, and loving. And that's why the woman at the well has stood for such a long period of time as a picture of the tenderness of our Lord Jesus Christ. With the self-righteous and the prideful, Jesus was always an explosive powerhouse.
Think about the 23rd chapter of Matthew where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. You whitewashed tombs. He calls them hypocrites, Pharisees, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Jesus was not a weak man.
He was willing to be hard with those who were prideful in their religion, who were prideful in their devotion to their legalism. But when Jesus meets the broken woman, he comes to her with tenderness and love.
His loving disposition changed the course of that woman's life. Well, 2 ,000 years before Jesus met the woman at the well, there was another woman who herself was beside a well or a spring of water. And she has an encounter as well.
She too was caught up in the midst of a sinful situation. She was used by Abram and Sarai as a surrogate, something God had not commanded and apparently not sanctioned. And yet when she finds herself alone and desperate, she too has a visitation from the Lord who comforts her.
And thus I have entitled today, The Other Woman at the Well. What I want to do is I want to walk through the text as I always do and make comments as I go. We're going to look at this text really in two parts, the visitation in the wilderness and then the birth of a son.
The visitation in the wilderness will take up the vast majority of the time. The birth of the son only comes in verses 15 and 16. Let's look first at the visitation in the wilderness. It says, The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
Now that tells us a little bit about where she was going. This spring on the way to Shur, this is back going toward Egypt. She's going home. She's trying to find a place where she won't be mistreated anymore.
She's trying to get back to her homeland, possibly family, possibly somewhere she can get away from the mistreatment that she has received. And on her way there, she finds herself by a well of water and an angel appears to her.
But what we must understand is that the construct of this particular statement in the Hebrew is very specific and we need to understand what it is saying. Because it does not simply say an angel appeared to her, but the construction of the language with the definite article is that this is the angel of the Lord.
And might I say, this can be somewhat confusing. Because what I'm going to say today, and I'll go ahead and give it to you early, that way when I come back and rebuild, you'll understand where we're headed.
I believe this angel is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is something we need to be careful with because in the Bible there is always a very clear distinction between creator and creature.
And when we put things into categories, the only person that fits into the category of creator is God himself. Now God is three persons, so we could say God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is the only one who fits into the category of creator.
Everything else, including angels, fit into the category of creature. Angels are created beings, they're not eternal beings. Like we are created by God, angels are created by God. The Bible doesn't tell us when, but we know that they were created by God to be His ministers.
The Bible says they are ministers of God, ministering in His presence as the seraphim who fly in His presence and say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with His glory, as we see in Isaiah 6, and the ministers who bring messages.
And that's, by the way, where the word angel comes from. The word angel simply means messenger, right? So when we think of an angel, the word messenger is what is typically, we're thinking of like the one who came to Mary, Gabriel, came to Mary and said, you're going to have a son, remember?
And we remember other times where angels would visit people and they would have a message from the Lord. But in the Hebrew construction of this, this is not an angel, but this specific construction is the messenger of Yahweh.
And the definite article construction is important because what we find as we look through the Old Testament, that anytime we see the definite article construction, the messenger or the angel of Yahweh, the angel always speaks as if he is Yahweh.
I want to point you to a few texts, and we're going to do a little bit of Bible sword drills here. We're going to run to a few texts, but then we'll be back in Genesis 16. So if you have your Bibles, I want you to literally see how these play out.
First turn with me to Exodus chapter 3. If you're looking in our pew Bibles, well, we have different ones now, I was going to give you the page numbers, 59 in the big ones, don't know what it is in the little ones.
But Exodus chapter 3, you remember what this is? This is when Moses speaks to the burning bush. And look at what it says in chapter 3 verse 1. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian.
And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Notice who's speaking, God. But verse 2 said it is the angel of the Lord who is appearing.
But who is speaking as the angel of the Lord? God himself called to him out of the bush. Moses, Moses, and he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near, take your sandals from off your feet for the place upon which you stand is holy ground.
Why is it holy ground? Because this is the Lord. This is the Lord in this presence. Moses, take off your shoes. You're standing on holy ground. And he said, and who is he? Follow the pronouns. Who is the he in verse 6?
The he in verse 6 is the Lord and the Lord is the angel of the Lord in verse 2. It says, and he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at who?
To look at God. So we see the angel of the Lord is in the bush, but who is he seeing? He's seeing Yahweh. Now here's something just for a moment. Think of it like this. Is God powerful enough to present himself as a man?
Absolutely. We're going to see this in verse chapter 18. When God eats, when the Lord eats with Abraham, he's got to be in the form of a man. I'm pretty sure he doesn't come in the form of a frog, right?
He comes in the form of a man because he sits and he eats with him. So if God can take the form of a man to present himself to a man, can he not also take the form of an angelic being to present himself?
Certainly. So when we see the term the angel of the Lord, this is God presenting himself as an angelic being. We'll look at it again. Some of you may not be as convinced as I am, so let's continue.
Turn in your Bibles to Judges chapter 2 and verse 1.
Judges chapter 2 and verse 1 says, Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochem and he said, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.
You shall break down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. What is this that you have done? Do you hear what they're saying? Hear what the angel is saying? I made my covenant with you. How can the angel say that if he's not speaking?
He's not speaking for Yahweh. He's speaking as Yahweh. I led you out of Egypt. I have been with you and I established my covenant with you and you have not upheld your covenant with me. Notice the angel is speaking as Yahweh.
Now let's go back to Genesis, but not to chapter 16. Go back to Genesis chapter 31. Again, this may have been more feeling like a Sunday school lesson, but I want you to leave today confident as I am of who we are speaking of when we speak of the angel of Yahweh.
Now, if you're in chapter 31, go to verse 10. This is the story of the, remember the flocks where the animals were bred a certain way and they had the spots and the stripes and the things. This is in the midst of that story with Jacob.
And it says in verse 10, it says in the breeding season of the flock, I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted and modeled. Then the angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob, and I said, here I am.
And he said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted and modeled for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I remember verse 11 says this is the angel speaking, but verse 13, I am the God of Bethel.
What is Bethel? That's the house of the Lord. That's the house of God. I am the God of the house of God where you anointed a pillar and made a vow. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.
The angel of God, it says here, is still the angel of Yahweh, but speaks as Yahweh. One last one before we go back to Genesis 16. This one I would say is without dispute and this one actually, and none of them I think are really disputable, but this one, this one teaches something very interesting.
I want you to turn to chapter 48 of Genesis. This is the blessing of the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. And you'll remember this story where the grandfather crosses his arms because he's putting the blessing on the one and he puts it on what Joseph thinks is the wrong one and he tries to uncross his arms and he said, don't do that.
I know what I'm doing. I don't know if he slapped his hand, but he kind of, don't do that. I know what my hands are doing. But listen to how this goes. This is chapter 48, verse 14. And Israel stretched out his hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn.
And he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil. Notice that.
Did you hear it? The God who did this, the God who did that, the angel who did this. He's following the same course of statements. It's all in the singular. He's not adding another person. He's calling God in that sense, the angel of the Lord.
The God who did this, the God who did this, the angel who did this. Hear it again. Hear it again. Beginning of verse 15. And he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil.
Bless the boys. So in this context, he calls God by the term angel. So now, with all of that, all of that back in our minds to the concept that the angel of the Lord can be referencing Yahweh himself.
Now go back to chapter 16 and let us look at what he says to Hagar. The angel of the Lord, verse 7, found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur, and he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?
By the way, a whole sermon could be done on that question alone. Where have you come from and where are you going? This is, you know, a lot of us need to ask that question ourselves. She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.
The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.
Who is the one who numbers offspring? Who is the one who opens the womb? Who is the one who gives children, who gives life? The Lord. It is God. And he says through the angel, as the angel, I will multiply your offspring.
By the way, this is the first time the phrase the angel of the Lord is used in the Bible. The first person to have this interaction with this figure is Hagar that we know of. The first outline of this text is right here.
And notice what Hagar says to him later. I have seen him who looks after me. Well, who is she talking about? She's talking about the Lord. She's talking about Yahweh. I have seen him who sees me. And therefore she calls him the God who sees.
By the way, she gives God a name. This is very interesting. This is the only time, first time a woman has been visited by God in the Bible that we know of. It's the only, it's the first time a woman is visited by the Lord, speaks to the Lord.
And it's the first time that a specific name is given to the Lord. You know, later Abram will call him Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides. And there's other names that are given. But this is the first time a name is ascribed and it's ascribed by a woman.
Again, the God who sees. Throughout the Bible, the angel of the Lord is used to describe the presence of God in angelic form. What we would call a theophany. But more specifically, and I prefer the term Christophany.
And now I want to take you on a theological side note. Because it's important to understand that when we talk about the angel of the Lord, I already said I believe it's Christ, but I haven't proven that yet.
I've only proven that it's a presence of Yahweh. But here's what you must understand. Yahweh is always revealed to us through the person of Christ. How do we know this? We go all the way to the New Testament and Jesus says, no one has seen the Father.
The only begotten Son, He reveals Him. Now we understand why the angel can speak as being the messenger of Yahweh and Yahweh. Because Jesus is the messenger of Yahweh and Yahweh. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God and the Word was God. How can you be with God and be God? Only if you're Jesus. The only one who can be in the presence of the Father and share the nature of the Father are the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And the Bible tells us that when the presence of Yahweh is on display, it's not the Father and it's not the Spirit, it is the Son who reveals Him. John tells us in chapter 12 that when Isaiah saw the Lord seated on his throne in Isaiah 6, that he was looking at Jesus.
He said he saw the glory of Christ. This is why we can say no one has ever seen the Father. But they have seen Yahweh. How have they seen Yahweh? Because the Son Himself is Yahweh and He reveals the Father to us.
This is why when people say, what is God like? He's like Jesus. If you want to know God, know Jesus. He reveals the Father to us. I and my Father are one, He said. And He's speaking there that they are, when we look at one, we've seen the other.
They're not, they don't have two different wills or two different opinions. They are of one mind and one heart, two persons, but one being. And their perfect nature, while being distinct, is not divided.
And so the angel of the Lord can speak as the messenger, but also as the one sending the message, because He is the Lord. This is why Calvin said in his commentary on this passage, Calvin said, but let us inquire who this angel was.
The ancient teachers of the church have rightly understood it to be the eternal Son of God in respect to His office as mediator. Now that's Calvin writing 400 years ago, still same theology. This, and who does he cite?
The ancient teachers, saying that throughout the history of the church, there has been one identification for the angel of the Lord, and it is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, with that in mind, let's consider for a few moments what the angel of the Lord, what Christ says to Hagar.
We'll look at verse 8. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord also, or no, the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her.
I want to tell you something. Right away, that doesn't sound very comforting, because she left because she was being mistreated. And I have kind of stressed today, if you haven't picked up on it already, that I think this is a comforting encounter.
Again, I compared it to the woman at the well. But go back to the woman at the well. That was a comforting encounter, but she still heard what she needed to hear, right? Even though it was a comforting encounter, she still heard that, hey, you're living in sin with this dude who's not your husband, right?
Nobody wants to hear their sin on display, but that's still a comforting encounter when it's coming from the loving lips of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because he's calling her to repentance, right? And so what does he, literally, if you think about it, he's calling Hagar to repentance.
He's saying, turn around and go the other way. What is repentance? Turn around and go the other way, right? Turn and go back, which means she needs to be where she was, not where she is. You say, why?
I don't have a good answer for you, except this. She has Abram's child in her body, still Abram's child. I thought a lot about this this week. Why would God make her go back? Because it's still Abram's child, and there is still a purpose for this child.
Even though this child was ill-conceived, even though this child's story is a mess, and we talked about that last week, God has a purpose in what he has decreed. And there's not a baby alive today whose birth was not decreed by Almighty God.
That needs to be remembered. You hear people talk about, well, this child was an accident, maybe from your perspective, but not from God's. God doesn't have accidental babies. God has a purpose. Even if that purpose is not understood, even if that purpose is something that we don't understand and it's difficult to really conceive, God has a purpose for this child.
He has a purpose for his mother, and he says you need to go back to his father. So that's as good as I can give you as far as, because he doesn't tell us why I'm giving you my heart on this. I think this is Abraham's child.
You need to go back. Reconcile the situation. Go back. Okay. So we come to verse 10. It says the angel of the Lord also said to her, this is where the blessing comes in. He also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.
You understand what blessing she just received? The Bible tells us that children are a blessing from the Lord. Blessed is the man whose quiver is filled, right? What does that mean? It's talking about arrows.
Children like arrows in a quiver, and blessed is the man whose arrows are filled. We live in a society today where the less children you have, the better off you are. That's the way people act. The less children you have, the better off you are.
You know, the Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible teaches that children are a blessing from the Lord, and she's being told here, you're not only going to have a child, but from this child, there's going to be an entire ocean of people.
There's going to be an entire multitude of people who come from you. And again, in the ancient world, that was a blessing. In our modern world, it's still a blessing, even though people have lost sight of the blessing.
Verse 11, and the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are pregnant, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. The word Ishmael means he hears.
Interesting. Verse 11 caught my attention, and I don't want to get off on a tangent, but verse 11, as I was studying this, caught my attention how much it sounds like what Gabriel said to Mary. You know, you will have a son.
And what was the prophecy? You'll have the son who'll be called Emmanuel. You'll have a son who'll be called Ishmael. It even has a similar sound. And again, it just goes to show the heart of the Lord in this.
You're going to have a son. You're going to call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard you. Who is Hagar? She's an Egyptian handmaiden, but God still heard her. Can I tell you this? God still hears us, too.
Sometimes I think we think God's not listening. God hears us, especially in our affliction. God hears us. The Bible says God is near to the brokenhearted. He hears us. Verse 12, now, verse 12 kind of comes out of nowhere.
He shall be a wild donkey of a man, and King James gets a little creative with that one. But I want you to understand, a lot of people take that negative. It's not as negative as we think. I mean, if I looked at your kid and I said, man, that kid's like a wild donkey, you'd probably be mad at me, and I'd get it.
But actually, in the context, what it refers to is it refers to being free. A wild onager was like a wild stallion. It was an animal that had not been broken. It was an animal that had not been tamed.
Ishmael would live a life that was outside of norms, social norms, constraints that we would think of, social constraints. He would be a man that was untamed in that sense. Is there some negative to that?
Yeah. But it's not all negative. I mean, if I told you you had a donkey for a child, you might get offended. If I said your son is a wild stallion, you might get excited, right? So there's some, there's not all negative is what I'm saying.
It's still referring to her son, but he does say something that we need to note. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him. That's the negative.
He is going to be a man who doesn't fit in socially. He's going to be a man who doesn't fit in with everything else. He's going to be wild. He's going to be untamed. He's going to be socially different.
People's hands will be against him. He'll be against them. But he will still dwell among his kinsmen. They're not going to drive him out. He will still have a place. He'll still have a place. Verse 13, so she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her.
You are the God who sees. For she said, there truly here, I have seen him who looks after me. Now, for a minute, I want to take another side note. And I know I'm, I don't know where I'm at on time. I don't have a timer, but stay with me.
Don't leave me. It's important stuff. Because there's a lot of folks who would say, and especially in evangelical circles in the last 50 years, well, in the last 20 years specifically after 9 -11, a lot of people have said that Ishmael is the ancestor of all the Muslims.
That's not true. And we need to understand the distinction here. Ishmael is an ancestor of many of the Arabic tribes. But not all Arabs are Muslims. Some of the greatest Christians in the world right now are Arabs.
Just consider that. Now, where we do see the distinction is Mohammed, when he was writing the Quran, he saw Ishmael as a prophet of Islam. And he sort of took Ishmael as his own and made Ishmael part of the Islamic system.
So this doesn't mean that that was God's plan for, in the sense of this is what Ishmael is going to be. Some people see this as a prophecy of Islam. I don't believe it's necessarily a prophecy of Islam.
But I do see Islam taking from the Bible something that they made their own. And what Mohammed did was he changed some of the stories. Like the Muslims, they don't believe that Abram offered Isaac on Mount Moriah.
They believe Abram offered Ishmael on Mount Moriah. In fact, they believe that the Kaaba, which is that big black building in Saudi Arabia, they believe the foundations of the Kaaba were built by Abram and Ishmael.
So they see Ishmael as a prophet of their system. And some people have gone all the way back to chapter 16, seeing this verse about his hand being against them and their hand being against, and said this is God prophesying Islam.
I don't necessarily think that that's true. Because this is about Ishmael himself. You may want to argue with me later. You may want to send me an email. That's fine. But let me just say, let me just close that section by saying this.
There is going to be a division between these two brothers. Because when God finally brings Isaac into the situation, we get to chapter 21. There is going to be such a division between them that they're finally going to have to cast Ishmael away.
But when Ishmael is cast away, he's about 16 years old at that point, when he's cast away and Hagar is again with him in the wilderness and he's dying of thirst, God shows her another well, another spring of water.
So God is still gracious even after he's cast out of Abram's home. So the point of all of this is to say, we mustn't miss the tenderness of our God in this situation and the love that he's demonstrating in this context.
This is a person who many people think, just get rid of her. Just get rid of him. And God is being gracious to the outcast. God is being gracious to the broken. And he doesn't quit being gracious even when they're cast out of Abram's home, he's still gracious to them.
And go home and read chapter 21 and see what I'm talking about. She lays him under a bush thinking he's going to die of thirst. Do you remember that? And God opens her eyes and shows her there's a well of water.
Why? Because he made a promise. This young man, a seed is coming from him and an entire nation is coming. And God doesn't break his promises. He's not going to die of thirst. He's going to live on. There is tremendous grace on display in this passage.
Tremendous mercy. Now, a lot of people have this question. Pastor, do you think Sarai, or excuse me, do you think Hagar was a believer? Do you think she was saved? I'll say this. Her son and her are not part of the line of promise that's described in Romans 9.
But she demonstrates faith when she says, the God who sees me and I have seen. So I can't say whether or not she was saved, but all signs indicate she knew who she believed in and she had seen him. Later, we're going to sing a song.
I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known, nor why unworthy of his grace. But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.
God knows whether she was saved. God knows her heart. And God is gracious to those who believe in him. God is gracious to those who are broken and trust in him. So can I ask you that today? Do you trust in him?
You know, a lot of times it takes being broken before we can really learn to trust. Sometimes, and some of you have shared with me your testimonies, and some of your testimonies include, and then God broke me, and then I believed.
And then I was alone, and then I believed. Then I was desperate, and then I believed. I know where I was at 19 years old. I found myself realizing that for 19 years, having gone to church since I was seven years old, I didn't really believe.
I found myself in a situation where I was questioning whether or not God even existed. I was questioning whether or not this whole thing was all just a lie. And I found myself desperate and alone. It's the only time in my life I ever wanted to get drunk.
I've never been a drinker, never wanted to drink, but I wanted to do something to make the pain go away. By God's grace, he didn't let me. But he did visit me, and he opened my eyes to see and my ears to hear.
And I called upon the name of the Lord. Where are you today? Remember what we said earlier? Where are you coming, and from where have you come, and where are you going? From where have you come today, and where are you going?
When you leave this place, you're going back into the world. You're going to forget everything I've said. You're going to forget everything the word has said, or you're going to hear the word of the Lord, which visits the broken in their distress and gives a tender and merciful, loving call.
Believe, repent, and you will be saved. The Bible says, whosoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Will you? Let us pray. Father, I so thank you for this opportunity to be reminded of your tender mercy.
And Lord, you are so tender, you are so loving, you are so gracious. Lord, help us to see in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, hands that welcome the sinner, hands that draw us near, hands that love us who are unlovely and often unloving.
Lord, help us to understand your saving grace and trust in you. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.