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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 16:7-16
Well, this morning we press on and continue in chapter 16 of Genesis, and we're picking up where we left off last week in verse 7. We went into verse 7 a little bit last week, and of course I want to recap some of that.
I wonder, since one of the points that we talked about last week was that echo of Adam that we see in Abram in this chapter, how Adam's great failure and Eve's deception and temptation in chapter 3, how this is now parallel with Abram and Sarai.
And of course, in the narrative of Genesis, this is meant to show the spread of sin, that though God has finally gotten to the call of Abram, the one whom He's giving all of these promises to, the one on whom God is going to bring about the great seed that He had promised in Genesis 3 .15.
So God's whole purpose of redemption has been funneled down through Abram, and yet here we see that Abram falls. In other words, we cannot put our hope even in Abram. Despite all of God's favor and grace, even Abram falls.
We must yet await the righteous one who is to come. There's an ironic reversal here. I missed my point as I was rambling. I wonder how many of you husbands worked on your passivity this past week in light of that point from last week.
It's amazing how quickly and how easily we can become passive, especially in a household where there's stress or contention or some relational difficulty, in-laws, etc. And so don't, you know, don't lose sight of the importance of what we see here.
The importance of what God has given for a man and for a woman, for a husband and for a wife. As our brother was praying, we ought to pray constantly and continually with thankfulness in our hearts for the spouses that God gives to us.
Well, we also want to keep in mind the larger context of where Abram has been. Remember, the consequences of Egypt are just now catching up to him. Though it took four chapters for these consequences to come home to roost, they did come, and that's a principle in Scripture.
It's a principle in life. What you sow, you will reap, because God is not mocked. The consequences of sin sometimes don't reach you until four chapters later, but they will.
Reach you.
They take some time to sprout, but the consequences will be there in your body, on your hands, in your conscience, in your life, in your relationships. The consequences of sin are bound to come, and we certainly see that with Abram, don't we?
There's an ironic reversal here in chapter 16. We didn't talk about this last week. Remember how Abram went down to Egypt when he was in doubt, and he gave Sarai over to the Egyptian pharaoh. And here in chapter 16, they're in Canaan, and Sarai's the one doubting, and she gives Abram over to the Egyptian Hagar.
So this is the reversal, and this is the consequence of sin. Abram was just like Adam in the Garden of Eden. He listened to the voice of his wife. He took, he partook of what she gave to him. He was passive in his sinfulness.
He disobeyed God in his rebelliousness. And just like Adam, he welcomed dysfunction and brokenness into his home, and that brokenness affected all of his offspring to this day. The offspring of Hagar affects the offspring of Abram.
Sin begins with a failure to believe God in Genesis 3. Sin always begins with a failure to believe God. All sin begins with an attitude of unbelief. The true believer we see here in Genesis 16, Abram is a true believer, has a sin nature, is prone to sin, prone to wander, prone to break fellowship with the Lord because of ignorance and lack of spiritual perception.
The believer can fall into sin, often does fall into sin, and the consequences of falling into sin are momentous. That's why we gather as sinners, and we sing hymns like, My sins, my sins, my Savior. We come as ones like Abram who must put his hope, not in himself, but in God.
And as for Hagar, we've watched this couple that has been righteous by faith, the one whom God has given covenant promises to, we've watched them disintegrate in chapter 16. Sarai had Hagar, this Egyptian maid, and now this relationship that was so close, she was the right-hand woman, very entrusted, a different Hebrew word, a position of exalted authority.
Now Sarai hates her, disregards her. She's so abusive, so cruel when Abram is passive, she's in your hand, do what you want to her, even though Abram had just married her. Sarai is so cruel that Hagar runs away.
And as we said last week, for a fugitive slave, the penalty would be horrible, if not death. And Hagar is being so badly abused by Sarai that she thinks as a pregnant woman it's better to wander through the wilderness than to stay with Sarai.
I'd rather die in the wilderness than to stay in this tent with Sarai. That's saying just how bad things have become in Genesis 16. But of course, as we left off last week, where we ended, God intervenes, just like Genesis 3, where sin abounds, grace abounds, much more.
And so God intervenes. He acts to show mercy and to bring redemption. We find him surprisingly doing that toward Hagar, not toward Abram and not toward Sarai. The only speaking that God does in this passage is toward the Egyptian slave that runs away.
And so we pick up in verse 7. Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to shore. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, so he already knows exactly who she is.
Hagar knows exactly where she's been. Sarai's maid, where have you come from? Well, he's already answered that. He already knows. So clearly he's not asking for information. Where have you come from and where are you going, as we said last week, the two questions that Abram and Sarai should have asked themselves.
And she said, I'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai. So here there's an interesting dynamic. She's fleeing from the presence of Sarai. And perhaps in her mind, she's fleeing from the presence of the God of Sarai and the God of Abram.
Because of course, in ancient Near Eastern cultures, deities were localized. As you passed from territory to territory in that worldview, in that mindset, you passed from the protection or the oversight of a deity.
A god in that mindset was over his people and over the land in which they dwelt. And so you would have to pay homage to the gods of wherever you went on. That's the significance of Abram coming into Canaan and not worshiping what the Canaanites are worshiping, but building an altar to God so that they will worship the true and living God.
Well, perhaps Hagar, coming from Egypt, she had this understanding of the pantheon. She had her gods that she worshiped in Egypt. Maybe she still had them, devotional statuettes. But of course, she understands, well, Yahweh is the God of my master, and he's worshiped here, at least in this tent and the few altars that my master has built.
But that's where he is. And now I'm in the wilderness, and so I've left the presence of my master, and I've left the presence of the God of my master. But of course, that's not the case at all. She might have fled the presence of Sarai, but she cannot flee the presence of God.
And so God intervenes. Clearly, she wasn't leaving to seek the Lord's will. Clearly, she wasn't leaving in order to worship. It's amazing how this passage ends. And yet, God intervenes. And so again, we have this picture.
So instructive for the Christian life, isn't it? People often think there's a way for them to flee from the presence of God, and it is not possible for man to flee from the presence of God. Lo, I descend into the depths of Sheol, David says, and you are there.
It is impossible for man to flee from the presence of God, though often in their darkened minds, they think there's some corner, some closet, some room that they can be in, in which God is not present, God does not see.
And this will be the great shock for Hagar, that God has found her, because God is always present, ever present, infinitely present. The angel of the Lord meets her. And as we began to say last week, this angel of the Lord, in our translation, is capitalized, capital A Angel.
That's a decision that translators make, and this is the right decision. This is the capital A Angel of the Lord. In other words, this is the Lord himself. This is the Son of God, pre-incarnate. This is the Son of God before He took on flesh in the form of Jesus, our Savior, the God-man.
Now, how do we know that this is the case? Well, this is the first instance we have of angel in Genesis so far. The Hebrew word is malak. Could be translated as messenger, and we'll have other accounts where there's angels or messengers.
Here, angel of the Lord isn't that helpful, but rather the response that comes after. Whenever you have a piece of Hebrew narrative where there's an angel of the Lord, and you have to make the decision, is this the Lord Himself?
For the Hebrew mind, is this a theophany? For the Christian mind, is this the Son, pre-incarnate? Then you're looking for corroborating evidence. And how that angel is responded to is the key. And here, as we'll see, when we go on in Genesis 16, you'll notice in verse 13 how Hagar responds.
She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. So she refers to the angel as the Lord, and that tells us that Hagar recognizes that who she's talking to is indeed the Lord Himself. So this is the pre-incarnate Son of God.
Now, please keep that in mind for where we're going toward the end of this sermon when we see the Son of God incarnate. Here we have the pre-incarnate Son speaking to this woman. And later on, we'll see the incarnate Son, and I hope we'll see a lot of similarity.
The last parallel we see to Genesis 3 is the question, where have you come from?
Where are you going?
God is not asking because He needs to find out. God's not only infinitely present, He's all-knowing, He has infinite knowledge. I think I've mentioned this before, but it's just so fascinating to me.
He doesn't just know things that can be known. He knows things that are not discoverable to our knowledge. He knows what theologians call middle knowledge. Not just the possibilities of things that could be, but every possibility of any slight variation.
So when we say that His knowledge is infinite, we mean it's truly infinite. And so when He asks a question like, where have you come from? Or where are you going? Or Adam, what have you done? Did you eat the fruit from the tree?
It's not that He was not present, and it's not that He did not know. What He's saying is, stop, think. Think about where you are. Think about what you've just done. Where are you right now? And who are you before Me?
That's what God is doing when He's asking questions. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress. Submit yourself under her hand. So this is the command that the Son of God gives to Hagar.
Return. You've left, it's been grievous.
You're afflicted.
You've been a victim. Though you're not yourself without sin. Return. Talk about the last advice Hagar wanted to hear.
Go back.
You were saying it was better to die in the desert than to go back to that tent. And what's God's command?
Isn't that often the way that God's commands work in the Christian life? Lord, I will not do that. And God's like, well, here's the command, go do that. It's like Calvin when he left Geneva because he was having so much difficulty with the city council in Geneva.
They were making life rather difficult. And so he moved on to Strasbourg. And there it was like a paradise to him. He had all the time that he needed. His ministry was very fruitful and successful. And then soon the call came, we need you in Geneva.
Things have gotten out of hand. We need you to come back and teach and minister in the city. And Calvin said, I would rather die a thousand deaths than go back to Geneva. But because God wills it, I go.
And that's must have been what Hagar felt like. I'd rather die a thousand deaths. I'd rather die here in this desert than go back to Sarai and put up with that kind of treatment. But if you're commanding it, the Lord who knows my name, the Lord who's president sees all, then I go.
Hagar's instructed really to humble herself. How is she going to return to her mistress unless she humbles herself? She's not going to come waltzing back up to the Cold War as Sarai's proliferating and she's proliferating and they're just on opposite ends of the tents and they have no dealings with each other and they're going to try to work out.
This cobbled existence over the years.
Some dysfunctional marriages work that way. How is she going to return? How is she actually going to dwell? God says, submit yourself under her hands. How is she going to return? By submitting herself.
She's going to have to humble herself, swallow her pride, remember God's command and also remember the promise that he's about to give. So Christians learn from this also how they can endure. Hostile, hostile situations, hostile relationships, difficulties, trials, what do they do?
They first return because God commands it. Secondly, they humble themselves so that they can submit. They submit to that difficulty. They persevere, they endure that trial. How are you able to do that?
You remember what God has said, what God has commanded and also what God has promised. And so that's how you don't grow weary in doing good. You persevere because of what God has said. And this is what God says to her.
It's a prophecy. The angel of the Lord said to her, verse 10, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude. Does that sound familiar to us? It sounds a lot like what God had said to Abram back in Genesis 12, doesn't it?
Your descendants are going to be super abundant. You won't be able to count them. And the angel of the Lord said to her, verse 11, behold, you are with child and you shall bear a son. Does that sound familiar?
Sounds a lot like the annunciation to Mary, doesn't it? It's a very interesting echo here in Genesis 16. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. Hagar is afflicted.
She's in anguish. She's willing to die in the desert. That's the gamble she took when she left. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, every man's hand against him, and he'll dwell, our translation, in the presence of all his brethren.
The idea there would be a cross drum. You could even translate it against his brethren. He's always on the edge. There's always animosity. That's the idea here. It's not dwelling as Shem dwelling in the tents of, Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem.
It's rather he will dwell in the presence of all his brethren against them. Ishmael, according to this prophecy, is very significant. We're not going to unpack it this morning, but as we get to chapter 17, we're going to see just how significant Ishmael is in terms of understanding the covenantal structure, the covenantal flow of the Bible.
In fact, his descendants are recorded in chapter 25. So remember how we said the backbone of Genesis is that genealogical structure, the Toledoth format. Well, in 25, Ishmael enters into that. He's very significant.
But in terms of redemptive history, it's very significant that now there's a fleshly line, a fleshly seed that is born to Abram through Hagar. Paul's going to pick this up in Galatians 4. And when we get to Genesis 17, we're going to spend a lot of time there.
To some degree, as Derek Kidner notes, this son of Abram, Ishmael, would be a shadow, almost a parody of his father. His 12 princes would be notable in their day, but they would not be in the history of salvation.
In other words, though they're paralleling each other as time goes forth, God's promise, God's salvation is only through the line of promise, not through the line of the flesh, not through Ishmael. His restless existence would not be a pilgrimage, but an end in itself.
Do you see the parody here? There's not this rest that he's awaiting that he's searching for, but rather there's this restlessness. He's a nomad. The restlessness is an end in itself. His nonconformism is a habit of mind.
It's a principle. He's a wild man, uncontrollable, not a call to be a light to the nations. So there's this parody. He's opposing the line of promise. We come to verse 13, and here is really the heartbeat of the sermon.
Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees. For she said, have I also seen him who sees me? Therefore, the well was called Beerlehi Roy. Observe, it is between Kadesh and Bered.
So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. The first thing to notice in verse 13 is that the Egyptian slave who was afflicted, who counted herself as less than the least, not only in the status of her own house now that her mistress hated her, but she was despairing even unto death.
She was willing to run into the wilderness as a pregnant woman and die, potentially kill the life within her and take her own life in the wilderness. She was sojourning with no plan, no direction, really no hope.
She was just wandering aimlessly. And that is when God intervened. She had not known as far as we can tell the God of Abram. Certainly after Abram has been abusing her, do with her as you please. She means nothing to me, Sarai.
However you wanna treat her, you treat her. I'm not gonna interrupt. And Sarai says, well, that's fine because I'm gonna be cruel, evil, spiteful and abuse her. So she runs now, certainly if she had any inclination toward Yahweh, the God of Abram, she wouldn't have begun worshiping now.
Well, if this is the God of Abram and Sarai, seeing how they treat me, why would I ever wanna worship that God? But look at verse 13. She calls the name of the Lord. She calls the name of the Lord. She names God.
She's naming God so that she can call upon God. This is short way of saying she's calling upon the name of the Lord. She's worshiping the Lord. She has to name the God who she encounters so that she might worship him.
She calls the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees. And this is what she confesses. I've seen him who sees me. I had never understood that you saw me in the tent. When I was grieving, when I was running away, I didn't realize you were present.
You've come and sought me out.
You've found me.
Are you the God who sees me? And now I've seen you. She's worshiping. Even though Abram has shown utter disregard for her life. As we said, there's no search party being sent out to find them. We don't read somehow in between Abram rallying his 318 men.
Let's go out. Everyone take a different direction. Try to look for footsteps. We have to try to find her. We don't read a Sarai coming to an end of her spitefulness and saying, how could I have done this?
This was really my fault. I compelled Abram to go in and take her. And now I've driven her away. I need to make this right. I must myself run into the wilderness and find her.
We don't read that.
The only one who seeks her is the Lord. You know, it's a sad thing when God's people become a reason for people not to follow God. It's a sad thing when people name us as a reason not to worship God. It's hard, we think of what Jesus says about a prophet having no honor in his hometown.
And many of us, we always have a hard time and we're always praying when we get close to those family get-togethers, those holidays, those birthday parties, because a prophet has no honor in his hometown.
And they have a whole context of life with you and they've seen all the warts and all the stains and all the behavior, and they've convinced themselves, look at how prideful they are now. They just do this to make themselves feel better.
And I just feel like they're so arrogant when they're around me. Always condemning me, always judging me. You know, if this is the kind of God that loves them and that they serve, then that's the kind of God I won't follow, I won't serve, I won't worship.
Until they actually encounter the Lord. Until they actually encounter the Lord. And then like Hagar, they call upon his name. There's a great wisdom in what Scripture says, let God be true and every man a liar.
It's shameful that people use us as an excuse, but it's natural, isn't it? Some of that guilt lies upon us and we ask God to forgive us, but much of that guilt is just a weak, flimsy excuse. People will say, you're the reason I won't follow God.
You say, I'm a sinner, that's why I'm following God. You're a sinner too, that's why you should follow God. Let God be true and every man a liar. Not only me, but also you. Because you're lying to yourself.
You're in no state to actually understand who you are, who he is. You cannot rightly gauge yourself, you're a broken instrument.
Everything you do is corrupt.
You're actually looking for excuses and reasons to hide from him. You don't want to be found by him. The reason you don't like being around Christians is because you don't wanna be provoked. You don't want your conscience to ring the alarm bells.
You don't wanna think through your life, how it's a vapor and the end is coming. And there's two ways to live. There's a way that seems right to a man, but its end is death. And such is the delusion of sin that men trudging through the wilderness to inevitable ruin think they've found the right way to live.
I'm actually quite happy, quite comfortable, quite content. Jesus would really mess that up right now.
Oh, you bet he would.
But you're embracing the way of death.
And in him alone is life and peace and light and truth and mercy, fullness. It was the great preacher, William Gadsby, who said, in him is all fullness, right? In Christ is all fullness.
And so all else is emptiness.
That's Sarah in the wilderness. It is empty. That's a sinner in the wilderness. It is empty. And everything they pick up is a mirage. Christ is fullness. He is the one who sees. Have I seen him who sees me?
She recognizes something about who this Lord is. Not only his power, he's all present. His knowledge, he's all knowing. She's been addressed by name. But something of his character. He's the only one that's come after her.
And look how tenderly he comes to her. Hey God, where have you come from?
Do you see God's character shining through? This is the son of God. Abram's been faithless. Sarah's been faithless. They've both been abusive. She's been afflicted. God is faithful. Jeff Thomas says it so well.
Think of Hagar.
Brought to bed by Abram, then completely rejected by him. How much confidence would she have in the religion of a man like Abram? Abram wronged her, but the God of Abram comes looking for her in the desert.
Meets her face to face. Just like he had met with Abram. Just like he'd meet with Moses. Our God, he says, is the God of sinners. He's the God of sinners. Like Hagar, and Abram, and me, and you. God meets us in the time of affliction, as we said.
He doesn't meet with her in the tent. He doesn't meet with her in the laughter, in the closeness of a relationship with Sarai. He doesn't meet her when things are going relatively well. He doesn't meet her when she's trying to cobble things out.
He meets her when she's at a desperate strait, when she's at the plight, when she's in the wilderness, in a time of trial. That's when God intervenes. Notice that Hagar doesn't invite him. Hagar doesn't come out crying.
If there's some meaning to this, is there some purpose to my life? God, please show yourself. No, God intervenes. She's not even doing that much. Most sinners won't do that much. You get to a place, hopefully, where your conscience, under work of the Spirit of God, gets you to the place where you ask the question, how can God be merciful to me, a sinner?
And then you get to the stunning realization that you're seeing the God who has seen you. And so here we have a glimpse of the mercy of God. This site, this encounter will become a place that people go and draw water from.
Thirsty travelers will know. This is Bir Lahai Roi, the well of the living one, who sees me, or it could be translated the well of the seeing one who is living. This is the well of the living God. This is water in the wilderness, a stream in the desert.
John Gill, great 17th century Baptist,.
Gifted Hebrew scholar.
He says, Hagar, perceived by experience, his eye was upon her. Wherever she was, saw all that she did. Saw all her transgressions, her contempt for Sarai, her flight. Saw when she was at the fountain, reproved, recalled her, sent her back.
Saw all the workings of her heart, her repentance, her sorrow for her sins. Looked, smiled upon her, gave her precious promises. Looked upon her with his eye of omniscience. In other words, he knows all.
But also his eye of providence. He controls all. He looked upon her both with his eye of omniscience and providence, and with his eye of love and grace and mercy. She knew all this in this encounter. And therefore, she names him through this conviction.
The living God who sees all. In the time we have left, I want to just unfold and meditate and reflect upon this God who sees. And I hope we have enough time to consider seven points about it. Seven points.
Seven angles on this God who sees. And the first is, what strikes me in the text is, how intensely personal this is. So the first point is this. The God who sees me. The God who sees me. There's nothing generic about this.
There's nothing blurry or gray about this. This is the God who sees me. Have I seen him who sees me? That's what Hagar says. Not just who sees, who must see a lot, who must go from place to place. It's intensely personal.
And we're not in, you know, 21st century Western individualistic times here.
Still, notice this.
It's the God who sees me. Only to Hagar does God speak. We already brought out that point. God's not speaking to Abram. God's not speaking to Sarai. God's in the wilderness, revealing himself to Hagar.
Scholars have pointed out that for this time, at this period in ancient Near Eastern literature, there is not a single text where a deity addresses a woman by name, except this here in Genesis 16, verse seven.
This is the only writing that we know of from the ancient Near Eastern world where a deity addresses a woman by her name.
Hagar.
Hagar, where have you come from? Hagar, where are you going?
Hagar, go back.
Hagar, submit. Hagar, you're with child. Hagar, this is what you're gonna name your child because God hears your affliction, Hagar. Only to Hagar does God speak. It's the God who sees me.
He addressed me.
Hagar can go back.
He's addressed me.
He's been watching me. He's concerned about me. He cares what's going on in my life. He's concerned that I cry, that I'm afflicted, that I have a trial. He's been watching me. He sought me. He knows me.
It's the same awe. This is the pre-incarnate son. Let's go to the incarnate son. We're talking about the God who sees me. John, chapter one, beginning in verse 43. The following day, Jesus, right, the incarnate son, wanted to go to Galilee and he found Philip and said to him, follow me.
Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, right? These are the fishermen. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we've found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? I don't know what the equivalent would be for us modern day. Can anything good come out of the Appalachians? I don't know, something like that, maybe the Ozarks.
How could the Messiah, how could the one we've been waiting for come out of this little no-name town, Nazareth? Bunch of hicks, bunch of backwater people in Nazareth. Could anything good come out of there?
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him, before Philip called you, you were under the fig tree.
I saw you.
And Nathanael answered and said to him,.
Teacher, you are the son of God.
You are the king of Israel. That's the most amazing exchange, isn't it? Normally, we have that kind of reaction when Jesus causes a lame man to walk or a blind man to see or a leprous man to be pure. We see that kind of reaction when Jesus teaches some profound mystery of the kingdom or confounds the wisdom of the wise or causes the dead to rise.
All Jesus said was, before Philip called you,.
I saw you under the fig tree.
And the response of Nathanael is, you are the son of God. In other words, only God could have known. Only God could have seen. And you've seen. And so you are God. And you are the one that we've been waiting for.
You're the king of Israel. And Jesus answered and said to him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, you believe? Even Jesus is surprised by this. Are you kidding me, that's all it took?
Pal, I got a lot more, you should hang out with me. You will see greater things than these. Nathanael is absolutely shocked because only a God who is infinite, only a God who is omnipresent, this one that he has traveled to see for him to have been seen.
Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree. He knows this is the God who sees me. He sees me, intimate and yet infinite. Our minds break down when we, I try to do this every now and then, right?
You've done this too, where you watch some video, you could do this on YouTube, where they do comparison of planets in our solar system, and then you start going to stars and outside of the solar system, and then even got, and so on.
And you just try to hang on to get that size comparison.
You're like, all right, all right, here we go, all right.
Okay, all right, Mercury, got it, all right,.
Earth, Jupiter, whew, okay, keep going. Wow, the sun, wow. And then you start getting to some of these bigger stars, and your mind just, it's like, nope, 404 error, cannot compute that kind of size. And God is not only constantly present in all of this vast domain, the borders of which we cannot discover, but he just spoke it into existence, infinite.
And even the word infinite cannot contain the reality of infinite. We're always looking for a border, a ceiling, a way to get our hands around it. It's frustrating for us. We have to surrender. We have to yield to what we cannot discover, what we cannot know.
God is infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing. He's everywhere, all of the time. But he's intimate, he's intimate.
Hagar, where have you come from?
The God who sees me. Secondly, from the text, notice the God who sees affliction. The God who sees affliction. Our passage in verse 11. The angel of the Lord said to her, right, the son of God said to her, behold, you're with child, and you shall bear a son.
You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He's not just the God who sees me, he sees me in my affliction. He's the God who sees affliction. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction.
That's what Ishmael means, God hears. The thing that's so stunning about this passage is it's a preview of Israel in Exodus. In Exodus 1, we find Abram's descendants, they're in bondage, they're slaves, just like Hagar's a slave.
And they're in Egypt, the motherland for Hagar. And it's the same language, identical to Hagar's oppression. Think of this, this was Hagar's life, Genesis 16. They set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens, but the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad.
So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves. Ruthless, cruel, spiteful, vengeful. That's what Hagar was dealing with, with Sarai. And then we turn to Exodus 2. And I have to use the ESV here to make the point.
During those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and they cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning.
God, Ishmael, he heard their groaning. And God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and He knew. He's the God who sees affliction that comes up to His ears.
I've seen you.
I've seen you, Hagar, and your affliction I have heard. You're gonna name that baby boy Ishmael.
God hears.
And so we see the Egyptians oppressing the Hebrews, making them slaves. It's now another reversal between the progeny of Abram and Egypt. In Genesis 16, God is hearing the cry, seeing the oppression. He's hearing the affliction and He moves to be gracious.
He intervenes. That's exactly what He does to His people in Exodus 2. He's moved, He's compelled by the affliction He sees. God sees affliction. Abram doesn't see affliction. Sarai doesn't see affliction.
I was reading just this week. Unfortunately, this is the kind of things that are put out in the popular press. They have this new word, exvangelical. You've heard exvangelical. Former evangelical. As soon as we hear former, we're like, oh, I don't know about that.
Probably pretty shaky to begin with, but then you hear of certain people that seem to walk the walk and talk the talk, and all you can do with stunned eyebrows is say what John says in 1 John. Though they went out from us, they were never of us.
Well, this was a pastor's son in a rather large church in New York, and now he's denied the faith and walked away. And one of the reasons he gave, right, this is the perennial struggle. The world often assumes this is just a problem.
For Christians.
It's a problem for everyone, but Christians are the ones that have the answer. The problem of evil. The problem, as you deal with, especially a younger generation all around you, the one thing that's always in the back of their mind, and if you ever try to engage them with the things of the Lord, you can almost be sure that the trump card they'll try to pull out is, how can a good God allow evil in his world?
He either does not have enough power over it, and so he's a weak God that cannot be trusted, maybe he's not able to save, or he would, or he's not a God of love, he's not a compassionate God, because if he was good, if he was compassionate, there'd be no suffering, there'd be no evil.
And so this ex-evangelical, this son of this pastor, said, how could my dad go out to the Outback Steakhouse if he really believed and knew that people were being tormented in hell? And that was why he departed from the faith.
There's affliction.
And my dad's eating steak, and he's laughing with me and my siblings. I mean, if he really believes this, how could he do that? And he thinks that's my problem, our problem. I wanna say, apart from hell, and we have a lot to talk about there and some things that you need to understand, but do you not know that the world is full of affliction?
How do you eat, ex-evangelical? How do you smile? How do you go birthday shopping? How do you take a vacation? How do you joyride on the weekend when you know that children are molested or they're sex trafficking, or children are starving, or they're dying of diseases, or there's some horrific unjust abuse, cruelty, suppression and persecution of untold kinds, torture, darkness, brokenness, despair, tragedy, drug use.
A brother on Saturday was inviting me, on Tuesdays, they do this outreach at a methadone clinic in Worcester, and he's Gary George. I don't know if some of you know Gary George from Southbridge, wonderful brother.
I guess he's engaged in some preaching there, so I'm planning on going. And what I know about some of the harder cases is when they hear of someone overdosing,.
Such as the sickness of addiction,.
When they hear of someone overdosing and dying, the first thought that runs through their head is, I wonder who they got it from. That's really good stuff. Just flirting with death. This is the kind of affliction, helplessness, brokenness in the world.
How can you function in life if you were to bear this? How could you not prevent yourself from going insane.
If you could actually see what God sees?
And then you'd be praying and hoping and begging that there is a just, sovereign, powerful God who's also able to show mercy. God sees affliction. We don't see affliction.
God sees affliction.
He is long-suffering. Is it hard to understand the word infinite and the concept behind it? Yes, amen. It's even harder to understand how God can be pure, holy, and patient.
Third point, God sees the heart.
God sees the heart. Hagar, if she doesn't know, she'll need to know that it's not just that God can see what she does as we might see. If we had the Google Earth satellite and we could follow and say, yes, just like God, we are seeing you, Hagar.
We see things all externally. We judge by our eyes and the warped timber of our sinful minds, which makes us always appear better than everyone else. And also causes us not to see our own sins. We see our own sinfulness like horse blinders.
But God doesn't see as man sees. God is the God who sees me and he sees my heart. 1 Samuel 16, Saul is dead and God is now sending Samuel to anoint a king. The Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul?
Since I've rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse, the Bethlehemite. For I provided for myself a king among his sons. Sorry, I meant to, I misread that.
Saul is dead as far as God's purposes are concerned. He's not physically dead yet. And Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, take a heifer with you and say, I've come to sacrifice to the Lord and invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show you what you shall do.
And you shall anoint for me him, whomever I declare to you. Samuel did what the Lord told him and came to Bethlehem. Our little redemptive history bells ought to be ringing. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling.
Oh, don't you miss the days of the prophets? Again, just have to point it out. The political leaders of the city come trembling to the prophet. They come trembling. Do you come peaceably?
He said, peaceably.
I've come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves. Come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, surely the Lord's anointing is before him.
But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance. The Lord looks on the heart.
The God who sees, sees the heart. He doesn't just see what's out, he sees what's in. You might think somehow you have a, wow, that's amazing that he knows what I know about myself. No, I'm not even saying that.
You don't have a right estimation of yourself. You're not able to understand yourself rightly. Only God is able to do that. Biblically speaking, the human heart, ever since Genesis 3, is the source of sin.
It's not a muscle that pumps blood in biblical language. It's, as it were, the control center for one's moral life before God. All of the issues of life, Scripture says, flow out of the heart. And so the heart is sometimes synonymous with the mind.
Sometimes you could almost translate it as the will or the affections or the conscience. It's all of these things all at once. And the Lord sees our heart.
What an image.
He sees the seat of our decision making. He sees the wellspring of our affections. He sees our ambition, what motivates us, better than we do ourselves. Sometimes we're in awe when a close friend or a loved one can point out to us some secret drive, something that's compelling us that we can't see.
And they point it out and we just go, ah, like Nathaniel, how could you know that? You must know me really well. I didn't even see that in myself. God sees your heart perfectly all of the time.
Remember what we've just said about the heart.
It's the seat of your sinfulness. And God is seeing that all of the time. He's seeing our hearts when they're slothful and lazy, when they're cold-hearted, stiff-necked, stubborn, when they're distracted and ignorant and happy in ignorance.
God sees the heart. And what does Jesus say about the heart? The heart is a lovely thing. It's the noblest part of man. The heart produces courage, spirit of generosity, charity.
Always trust your heart.
Follow your heart and your life will go good. Your heart will never lead you astray.
Just trust your heart.
It's like the resolution of every Pixar movie.
Oh, you should have just trusted your heart. What does Jesus say about your heart?
It's full of evil thoughts, adulteries,.
Fornication,.
Murder, right? Even hatred is murder. Theft, covetousness, this fire of jealousy. You want what you don't currently have. Wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, meaning spitefulness, kind of like Sarai.
Blasphemy, pride, foolishness. This is what Jesus says about the human heart. In other words, this is the human condition. The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can know it? Jeremiah 17, nine. Andrew Gray, a great Puritan.
Not a very popular one, but fantastic. He said the heart is deceitful, idle, loving. Calvin said the heart is an idle factory. Mad, divided, ignorant. The heart is the mother of evil. Your heart will turn an enemy to you.
If we're all well searched, it's to be feared that many of us will be found to have two hearts. This is the mystery of sinfulness. Even our hearts deceive our own hearts. We wanna think that our heart is just that much more noble.
And good.
And charitable, but our heart is divided. If you're a Christian, you know the struggle all too well, and that's why we pray, Psalm 86, 11, unite my heart to fear your name. The Son of God sees the heart.
He knows what it produces. When he was walking among the earth, every encounter he had, when he was smiling, embracing, healing, he wasn't just seeing what we would see in awe as we were reacting to his power, he was seeing the heart of the one who was rebellious, stiff-necked, ignorant, cruel, spiteful.
Has it been hard for you to look at Abram and Sarai in this light? Look at a mirror. This is what faithful people do.
This is what we look like.
God sees all of it in ways that we choose not to see, ways that we refuse to admit. The Son of God sees the heart, and he speaks spiritually to the heart. He convicts the heart. He intervenes with the heart.
He addresses the heart.
He lays it open. He lays it bare.
He exposes it. If the heart is the conscience, he allows that guilt to begin to press and puncture that slothful invincibility that we have. This is what the Lord does to Hagar. This is how she'll submit herself.
The Lord sees, fourth point, the Lord sees our whole life.
Our whole life.
He came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near the plot of the ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. This is John four. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
And the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan? Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her,.
If you knew the gift of God,.
And who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with. The well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? She's trying to go toe to toe with him with her claim as a Samaritan. Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.
Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst.
Jesus said, you're gonna come toe to toe with me, let's go on the offense then. Go, call your husband. Come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said, you've well said. I have no husband, for you've had five husbands, and the one whom you have now is not your husband.
In that you spoke truly. Oh, God knows, he sees, he knows the heart. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. This lady's not really that quick with it. I love Nathaniel's reaction is so much better.
You are the son of God. This lady's taken a little while to get there.
Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.
Our father's worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father.
You worship what you do not truly know. We worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming. When He comes, He'll tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.
Now, look at what she says in verse 28. So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? She's come to understand now, if you know that much about me, you must know everything about me.
When she goes to share this testimony, she says, this man knew all that I ever did. He's the God who sees my whole life. So He sees me, He sees my affliction, He sees my heart, and He sees all of that in my whole life.
Everything is open before Him. There's no place that is hidden from His sight. Nothing He does not know, and He knows us better than we could ever hope to know ourselves. He sees things perfectly, because He is perfect.
He sees things with a perfect rule of righteousness, because He is righteous.
He sees the whole life,.
And that brings us to the fifth point. He sees our sinful shame. He knows our whole life.
It's all open before Him.
Would it not be a terror to you to just have your heart put on a projector reel just from this past week? Your thought life, the things you've thought about others, put on a projector reel for us all to sit like a theater?
Would that not be a terror to you?
God sees it all. He sees it all.
He sees your heart. He sees your whole life. He sees your sinful shame.
So when the God who sees it all,.
The God who sees your whole life,.
Your whole heart better than you do, and He sees your sinful shame, open before Him like a book,.
What are you to do?
And how will He react? What can be said about the God who sees our sinful shame? What kind of God will He be? When He intervenes, or when we cry out? Luke 7, verse 36. One of the Pharisees, the religious elite of the day, one of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him.
And he went to the Pharisee's house and sat down to eat. How would a Pharisee regard themselves? Would they be able to look at their own heart not according to Jesus' rebukes? And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner.
Sinner here, probably a euphemism for a prostitute. A notorious sinner, because they know her. Behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil and stood at His feet behind Him, weeping.
And she began to wash His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. So here she is in her sinful shame and she's heard of this man, Jesus.
She knows of this man, Jesus. And she comes to Him and it takes a lot of courage for her to go into the house of the Pharisees. They know what kind of woman she is. They don't like lepers. They don't like people that are maimed or defiled.
They don't like sinners. Don't come into our house. Don't come into our church.
But she knows Jesus is there.
And she has to go see Jesus.
And she has to go to church.
Because that's where Jesus is. She has to go to the house of the Pharisees. And she's there in her shame. And as she sees this holy man, the one who speaks so tenderly the word of God, the one whose inner parts twist with compassion in Matthew 9 when he sees the crowd, she can't help but just weep.
I hate this.
I hate my life.
I hate my guilt.
I hate the things that I've done. So all she can do is go to him and weep and show some token of her affection, her devotion. This is probably disgusting to you, but can I just wash your feet with my hair?
Can I anoint you with this oil? I've taken these proceeds. How these proceeds came about, we don't know. It's almost an act of repentance for her to use this oil. In verse 39, when the Pharisees who had invited him saw this, the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he spoke to himself saying, this man, if he were a prophet, he would know who, what manner of woman this is who's touching him.
She's a sinner. The God who sees all, the God whose whole life,.
Your whole life is open before him.
And he sees your heart, your motives.
He sees it all.
You would think that this is how he would be reacting to you if you're thinking rightly.
How dare you come to me?
How dare you approach me? I know exactly who you are and what you've done, what you thought and where you've been, what you're hoping to do, planning to do, hiding, the things that you won't let others see, the things that are so shameful, you don't even wanna let your mind dwell on them.
They fill you with dread.
That's what this Pharisee thinks.
He must not be a prophet. He's allowing this sinful, defiled woman to come near. And Jesus says, Simon, how about again, the God who knows all, sees all, knows the heart. Simon hasn't said anything, he's just thought it.
He said it to himself, but Jesus sees the heart. And so he says, Simon, I have something to say to you. Nothing's been said yet. Here's a woman weeping. Jesus sees the heart of Simon. I have something to say to you.
Oh yes, what is it, teacher? I was just preparing a little devotion for after dessert. There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, the other 50. One, they had nothing with which to repay.
He freely forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him more? Simon answered and said, I suppose the one who, he forgave more.
You've rightly judged, he said.
And he turned to the woman and he said to Simon,.
I love the detail that Luke gives us.
He turned to the woman, but he said to Simon, he's turning to Hagar, but he's speaking to Abram. Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she's washed my feet with her tears.
She wiped them with the hair of her head.
You gave me no kiss,.
But this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint my head with oil, but this woman has anointed my feet with fragrant oil. Therefore, I say to you, her sins, which are many.
I don't ignore sin, Simon.
You think you can see her sin?
You don't even know the half of it. You can't even begin to see the sin I see. I see your sin, her sin perfectly. I see sins you don't see. I see the things you do. I see the things you fail to do. I see all perfectly.
Simon, you think she's a sinful woman? You don't even know the start. Her sins are many, but they're forgiven because she's loved much. And he said to her, your sins are forgiven. He's the God who sees you.
He sees you.
And if you're in some desert, if you're in some trial, he hears that affliction.
He sees your heart. He sees your whole life.
He sees your shame, your sin, your rebellion,.
Your idolatry. He sees it. And the last point is, he sees it and he seeks. He sees it all and he seeks.
He's the God who seeks. Jesus entered, this is Luke 19. Jesus entered and passed through Jericho, and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but he could not because of the crowd.
He was of short stature. I'm sure you've heard of Zacchaeus. We've talked about this in times past. This is not, he was just a short man, and he had a hard time seeing over the shoulder. We have a kid's book at home that we read to our girls, and it's like this very imaginative, little cartoonish Zacchaeus going between toes, and he's trying to see, but he cannot see, so he has to climb up in the tree.
No, no, no, no. He was of short stature. He was despised. He's a tax collector. They hate him. He's a traitor to the people. He's made this lavish lifestyle and career off basically breaking our backs for the sake of Rome,.
Which we also hate.
He's a Benedict Arnold.
He's a traitor.
We hate him.
He's of short stature.
He wants to see Jesus, but he knows that other people are rushing out to see Jesus as well, and if these townspeople see him, they're gonna be like, hey, you're a prophet, master? You're the one that we're waiting for?
Well, send fire on this guy. Let me list all the horrible things he's done, and how he's a cheater, and a fraud, and a liar, and a hypocrite. And so he hides in a tree. He doesn't wanna, he wants to see Jesus.
He wants to hopefully hear something, but he doesn't wanna be found out. He doesn't wanna be exposed. People rush out in the ancient world because if you have an honored one coming to visit the city, say it was a royal dignitary, or an ambassador, or even a king or an emperor, you would take the most noble people of that city, and you would send them out along the main entranceway.
Through the gate,.
And you would hopefully have a number of people lining up to welcome, cheer, and receive this noble person. So you want the most noble person to be at the front of the line to say, we're so glad you're here.
Come stay with us this night. We're gonna have everything all set for you. So it's the most respectable, the most prestigious person in that city. They're gonna be the one that welcomes that royal person, that dignitary, into their home.
So that's what's taking place. Zacchaeus is hiding in the tree, because he is a fraud, and he is a cheat, and he is a liar, and he doesn't wanna be exposed. So he runs ahead, climbs up into a sycamore tree, a lot of foliage, good place to hide.
That's why he had to run ahead and climb up. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him. He sees all, you know, hiding from Jesus. And he said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste, come down.
Today, I'm gonna stay at your house. Who's the most prestigious person in the city? The most righteous Pharisee? No, I'm not staying with them. I'm gonna stay with you, Zacchaeus. I'm gonna come into your house.
I'm gonna bless you with my presence. I'm gonna give you this honor. And so he made haste, and he came down and received him joyfully. But when all the others saw it, they complained, saying, he's going to be with a guest of, he's going to be the guest of a man who's a sinner.
It's the same dynamic here. He must not be this Messiah we've waited for. He must not be a prophet. This guy's a cheat, a fraud, a sinner. If he knew who he was, he wouldn't stay with them. Again, they only see outwardly.
They don't even see inwardly.
Jesus sees it all.
He knows sins that they could never imagine. And he sees them the way that God sees them, out of perfect holiness with the least of those sins requiring eternal damnation. So how is this God going to act?
He's going to seek. He's going to seek. Zacchaeus come down. Zacchaeus, I'm coming over. And when he realizes now, he's dishonoring the guest. Now his reputation, his stain, is now risking to stain socially Jesus.
And so he says, Lord, look,.
I'm giving half my goods to the poor. If I've taken anything by anyone by false accusation,.
I restore fourfold.
Line up, go in my garage, take it all back. And Jesus said to him, today, same dynamic, do you notice that? He said to him, today salvation has come to this house, he's saying it to be heard, because he also is a son of Abraham.
Boy, here we are, right back in Genesis 16. For the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. What does the God who sees it all, all of the sin, all of the shame, this duplicitous, treacherous heart, what does he do when he sees your whole life in front of him?
He seeks. He seeks to save.
He intervenes to save. You couldn't have the rest of your life to list out the sins that you ought to repent of and do even the beginning of what you should do.
He sees it all. And he seeks to save.
A follower of Jesus is someone who knows they've been a lost sheep, prone to wander, but they've heard the voice of the Good Shepherd. They realize in my wandering, in the wilderness, the Shepherd came and he intervened.
He's seeking to save me. He doesn't want me to keep going in the way I'm going. He doesn't want me to embrace death. He doesn't want my life to slowly crumble in the midst of all my idolatries and debaucheries.
He's seeking to save.
You might be, so to speak, in that wilderness here this morning, and you're wondering, where is he?
When will he intervene?
This is the intervention. This is the intervention. He's seeking to save you now.
Where are you hiding from him? It's all open to him anyway. Do you feel like, well, that's all fine and well, but you seem like decent people, and I mean, I don't even wanna begin with where my life is.
Good, that's a start.
You haven't gone deep enough yet, but that's a start. We can work with that. You quickly realize that the whole reason we're here, head over heels in love with Jesus, is because we're sinners too. And our hearts betray us still, and rebel against him still.
And yet he still seeks to save. The son of man has come to seek and to save.
That which was lost.
He's a shepherd to wandering sheep. He makes them to lie down in green pastures. Are you in the wilderness, so to speak? God's calling you, he's speaking to you. He's the God who sees. He's inviting you to just acknowledge where you are before him and say, I cannot help myself.
I cannot clean my act up. It would not matter if I did. All is open before you. Here I am, Lord.
He's saying, yes, here you are. I see it all.
Come to me. Come to me.
I'll make you lie down in green pastures. I'll give you water that will cause you never to thirst again. Exodus 34, this is the Lord, the incarnate Son. I myself search for my sheep. I seek them out.
Yes, as a shepherd seeks his flock on the day.
He is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out my sheep and deliver them all. I'll feed them in good pasture and their foal will be on the high mountains of Israel. I will feed my flock. I will make them lie down, says the Lord God.
Do you believe that? Has he been seeking to save you? As a good shepherd, he's in the business of seeking wandering sheep that know that they're wandering and they've come to the end of the wilderness.
And they realize they're in too deep, they're too far gone. All they can do is do what that sinful woman did. Go to him with weeping. Friend, there are two ways to live according to Scripture. There's a way that seems right to a man.
And its end is death.
There's the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked. Jesus says all those who die in their sins will face an everlasting judgment. There's no oasis at the end of this wilderness.
It just gets worse.
You have either heard the voice of the shepherd who calls his sheep because he seeks to save the lost. Because you've acknowledged that if he's looking at your heart and your whole life and he truly is the God who sees, there is nothing hidden before him.
And now you are accountable for that truth. You either acknowledge that and acknowledge him and turn to him in repentance and believe upon him and his promise. You do what Hagar did, what Abram does, what we've done, what every sinner does.
Which is simply receive the grace of God. They save me, Lord, save me from my sin and shame. You see it all and I can't hide it. Or you keep going the path of Hagar before the Lord calls or you keep trudging defiantly, rebelliously in the wilderness that will cost your life.
Those are the only two ways to live. So let me encourage you as Spurgeon encouraged his listeners at the very end of his sermon on Hagar. He didn't do many sermons in the Genesis narrative and he did three on Hagar.
He felt this was very applicable to his hearers.
And I think it is.
Let not your heart fail you, do not run away. God is the living God and he is the seeing God. He in whom is all fatherhood, all friendship, all kindness still stands near you, watching you. Come and drink the living water.
The waters are cool and clear, drink and live. Did I hear you cry out? Did I hear you cry out? He's in London, he says London is a wilderness to many. You know just because you're in this packed city doesn't mean you're not in a wilderness.
He said somewhere the wilderness of men is the most miserable wilderness. Take comfort, the living God sees you. He sees not as man sees with a mere gaze of cold notice. His heart goes with his eye. His heart goes with his eye.
You have not even prayed yet like Hagar but he hears your affliction. Oh begin to pray and he'll deliver you. Spread your whole trial before him and he'll regard it. Get alone if you're in sorrow and in sin and tell it before the God who sees and watch him deliver you.
Sheep without this shepherd will not find pasture, they will not lie down and rest, they will have no defense against the thieves and the wolves of life. We must have a shepherd that will lead and guide, protect and defend, one that is moved with compassion at our weakness and need.
The question is do you have Jesus as your shepherd? He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by his wounds we have been healed, for you were straying like sheep but now you've returned to the shepherd, the.
Overseer, the God who sees it all, the overseer of your souls. Let's pray.
Father I do pray that that these feeble words that can only address ear canals would give way to your words that address the heart, your word Lord that opens eyes, your word Lord that when spoken implants into the heart, sprouts faith and repentance.
Lord we know your spirit moves as he wills. We pray that he is moving mightily this morning. Seek and save the lost here we pray, Lord. We are not capable to do it. There's no way that one can clean themselves up.
There's no way for them to turn coarse, straighten out life under their own effort, Lord, unless you have opened up all. And yet still in your mercy and grace you invite them to come as they are, that they might be clothed in a righteousness not their own, that that guilt that they're wearing, the shame of their sin would be canceled by the cross, that they would know that it is true of them, that they would be stunned as Nathanael was stunned, melted as Hagar was melted, that they would respond in worship and gratitude like the woman who broke in weeping and washing your feet with her hair.
Lord be the God who sees, sees our hearts, sees our whole life and because he sees our sinful shame he seeks to save. Be our Savior. Do that work, Lord. We ask it in your name. Amen.