Good morning.
How y'all doing today?
I'm doing very well. Thank you so much.
Hey, if you have made it here
to church on the high holy day of Super Bowl,
Congratulations!
No, but really we want to welcome everybody. If you're joining us here in our sanctuary for the very first time or if you're
watching us online for the first time, welcome. We're so glad you guys are here to worship with us at Hosanna.
I am Pastor Nathan and in today's study we are going to be reminded of the reality
that God not only sees everything, but he sees us.
He sees everything in our life. He sees every challenge, every difficulty, every success, every thought,
every intention of our hearts. God sees all of it.
And there's many people that have experienced this in their lives, but have you ever felt
abandoned or alone or forgotten in a situation? Maybe you're in a very difficult scenario and you're like,
is anybody aware of what's going on? Does anybody care? Or the greater temptation, does God even know?
Does God even care? Maybe your circumstances have gone from good to bad and you're like, where is God in all of this?
You know, maybe it's a situation where things are happening to you, but maybe you've been a part of contributing to it as well,
and yet you're tempted to say it's everybody else's fault and therefore God doesn't like me or God is mad at me.
You know, when we find ourselves in difficult circumstances, we're so often tempted to not even consider
why God might have us in those difficult circumstances or we fail to consider how our own wrongdoing might be contributing
to the scenario even in the face of legitimate wrongdoing to us by others.
And really the idea is, the question is, do we trust God? Do we trust that He knows best in every situation?
And do we go to Him first in our difficulties to get His counsel, to get His direction?
Well, the story we look at today is about a woman who's in the middle of all of that.
This woman is named Hagar, the Egyptian slave that we were introduced to in the beginning of Genesis 16,
and we found her running from a difficult situation only to be told today, we're going to see, to return to that situation.
You know, when we find ourselves in situations of great difficulty, whether it's brought on by ourselves or brought on by others,
we have to fight against that temptation to let the feeling of being alone, of being forgotten, to be abandoned,
govern how we respond to that situation because the reality is that God sees.
God knows, and when He intervenes in those situations, we have to be ready to submit ourselves to Him
and His direction, even when it's hard to do so because His direction, His leading, is always the right thing to do.
But before we get into that this morning, we're going to pray, or, yeah, we're going to pray too, but we're going to worship
because God is holy. God is omnipotent, He is almighty.
The Bible tells us that He knows how many hairs are on your head, that we are the apple of His eye,
meaning that He is so intently staring into our life because He loves us so much that we're literally reflected in His eye.
It's just a beautiful thing to know that God is with us no matter what the circumstances are,
but the lesson we always got to learn is, God, we got to follow You no matter what.
Let's pray. God, we love You so much.
We thank You, God, that even in our difficult circumstances, You are there.
Lord, that as children of God, really for anybody that lives in this world, there is nothing that happens that escapes Your notice.
And yet, God, in situations, both good situations and bad situations, Lord,
we're tempted to revert to our own understanding on how to deal with things.
Sometimes, God, when the situations are difficult, we just want to run.
But, Lord, doing so might put us in a place where we're not learning what You're trying to teach us.
And so, God, help us to be people who go to You first, who seek You first.
Lord, help us to be people that when You step into our lives, especially in our difficult situations,
that, God, we listen to You in Your direction, even when we don't understand it, even when it seems hard,
because, God, Your way is the right way.
And really, that's what we're trying to do.
Because, God, Your way is the right way.
And really, that's what it means, Lord, to walk in faith, to trust You in all things, God.
And so, we want to worship You for being our God, for being almighty, omnipotent, for knowing all things, and yet You still love us.
And, God, we thank You so much for that, because it is Your love that has changed our lives, has changed our eternity.
And we want to change every moment of our lives until the time we are standing before Your face.
We love You so much, and we thank You. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
We are going to be in Genesis, chapter 16 this morning, looking at verses 7 through 15.
But I want to start with some background to bring us up to the story.
And the first thing I want to start sharing is about the concept of slavery in the Old Testament.
You know, there's times where we read through the Bible and we see that, especially in the Old Testament,
slaves were still around in that sense of serving the people in Israel and other nations.
And, of course, we have our modern understandings of what slavery is.
And so, when we hear this word, it can hit our hearts really like, well, how come that's in the Bible?
And why does that exist? And why does God allow that?
And so, I want to give a brief background to that so we understand the context of this woman Hagar,
who was a slave in Abram's household.
Now, we do need to understand that slavery in ancient times was a very complex
and a very different thing to how we understand slavery in our modern context.
In our modern context, we understand slavery in the concept of chattel slavery.
When we think of what happened in America in the early years of America
and really what's happening today in a lot of places around the world,
chattel slavery is the idea of when someone is tricked or forced or kidnapped into servanthood or slavery
with no pay, no rights, no voice, nothing.
And that's what we understand in our modern context of slavery.
And so, it's easy for us when we read in the Bible that it says, you know, Abram and Sarai had slaves,
we think that's wrong because chattel slavery is a very terrible thing
and it's a big stain on the history of our country.
However, in the Old Testament, slavery was a greatly different concept,
especially within the nation of Israel and God's people.
In fact, in Exodus chapter 21 verse 16, when the law was being instituted,
God actually told the people that it is against the law to steal people.
They actually said that people stealing or person stealing is in violation
and so they said if you stole or kidnapped a person and then tried to sell them into slavery,
it was the death penalty.
That's how God felt about slavery in that context, chattel slavery.
But like I said, in Old Testament times, especially in the nation of Israel,
this idea of slavery was much different.
We might look at it today and say it's very similar, not the same as, but similar to employment.
And I know a lot of you are going, no, it's the same thing, my job is very terrible, right?
But there was a similar concept to it.
It's also, in the Old Testament, slavery was the concept of being a debtor, right?
So that's why Proverbs 22, 7 says the borrower is slave to the lender
because there's a lot of us today that are drowning in credit card debt, right?
And we can't just go, no, I'm not going to pay it because then they will wreck our lives
with reporting us to collections and whatnot.
But in Old Testament times, people existed in what was called an agrarian society, right?
There were no grocery stores, you couldn't go to Aldi, there was no Amazon.
It was basically you had to grow your own food, and if you were a person who was so poor
that you didn't have your own land, you didn't have people to work the land,
you were literally facing a situation where you were probably going to starve to death.
And so what would happen is people would often go to landowners
or people who had land and said, hey, I would like to make myself your slave,
and in return you will give me shelter, and in return you'll give me food.
And in many cases they would even get paid for their service.
And so that was the concept of slavery in the Old Testament, specifically in Israel.
People would put themselves into slavery to pay off debts.
I owe you a great amount of money, so I'm going to come and work for you to be your servant,
and they would call that slavery.
Now obviously in an ideal world, slavery would neither be an option or a necessity,
but God did allow it due to the socioeconomic conditions that existed in Old Testament times.
And really in Israel it was allowed for an overall basic reason, to help the poor survive.
That was the concept behind it.
And so yes, even in Old Testament times there was a lot of bad that took place in slavery,
especially in pagan countries and stuff, and there was a lot of abuse and all that kind of stuff with it.
But overall, specifically, especially within the laws of Israel,
it wasn't like our modern concept of slavery.
However, regardless of how a slave ended up becoming a slave,
they were owned by the master, just like we are owned by the credit card companies today.
And so they were considered property, but they still had rights.
They still had a voice in many cases, but they were still owned.
So they could be traded, they could be given away as gifts, they could be sold and bought, much like property.
So that's the slavery background here as we get into the story of Hagar,
who the Bible tells us is an Egyptian slave in the household of Abram.
Specifically, she is a servant of Sarai, who is the first lady of the family there.
And Hagar had entered into the slavery in Abram's household, likely in Genesis 12 when he had gone down to Egypt.
And if you don't remember the story, there was a famine in Canaan.
Everybody would go down to Egypt because it was so lush and so green there, the Nile Delta Valley.
So they would go down there to live and eat while the famine was taking place up in the land of Canaan.
Abram went there, said, wife, please lie to everybody and tell them you're my sister so they don't kill me and take you,
because she was a woman of legendary beauty and he was worried.
Well, Pharaoh, the leader of the land, took her anyways, right?
And then it tells us in Genesis 12, 16, it says he treated Abram well because of her,
and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.
So Abram was given all of this stuff in return for what Pharaoh thought was his sister, almost like a dowry in a sense.
And that is likely where Hagar came from and entered the family.
And then, of course, we know in the story that God sent severe plagues on the household of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh called Abram in, Nathan translation, what's up, dude, why'd you do this to me?
And then he said, leave. And it tells us there in Genesis 12 that Abram left with his wife and all he had,
which included the male and female slaves that he was given.
And so Hagar, again, being likely one of these people, that's how she got to the family.
So between Genesis 12 and where we're here at in Genesis 16, a number of years have passed, 10 plus years likely,
and Hagar had been with Abram's family this whole time.
We don't know how long she was specifically Sarai's servant, but it could have been much of that time.
But the point is that Hagar was in this environment where she was likely treated well, taken care of, fed, clothed,
and she had somewhat of a prestigious position being the mistress or the servant, the slave of the head, the first lady of the household.
But really the point of all of that is that for 10 plus years she had been hearing about Abram's god.
As he would build altars, as he was doing the stuff with Lot, and all these different stories we've been reading about,
Hagar was likely around for all of that, and so she had heard a lot about this god that Abram served.
And she would hear about that with the context of all the Egyptian gods that she knew from her homeland.
Now again, as we studied through the first part of the chapter, in a human attempt to make God's promises happen,
Sarai, who was barren, turned to a very common practice in those times where it said if the wife of the household,
the first wife, was barren and she was unable to produce children for her husband,
she could turn to her servant and give her servant to her husband, and he would sleep with her,
she would bear a child, and that child would then be considered the child of the first wife.
And so they did this. We don't know if Hagar had any say in the process.
A lot of people go, well of course she didn't, she was a slave.
But again, in those days, slaves did have somewhat of a voice, and so we don't know if there was any conversation.
We don't know if Hagar is like, well of course, that's what servants do in this day and age.
We don't know that, so we can't assume the most negative aspect of that.
But in doing this, making her the wife of her husband, Sarai lifted Hagar from a very low status of a slave,
of a servant, to what would be known as wife number two in the hierarchy of the family.
This was done so that the baby she would give birth to could legally be the heir of the family, right?
She had to be a wife if she was just a concubine, that child would not qualify to be heir.
And so this created this situation that we studied about last week, where there was difficulties that came up out of this.
We don't know anything about Sarai and Hagar's interaction, their relationship prior to this,
but what we do know is that Sarai was still wife number one, Hagar was now wife number two,
and then this problem came up when Hagar got pregnant.
It tells us in the word there that when Hagar got pregnant, she got really prideful, really puffed up,
really arrogant about the situation, and she would look at Sarai as contemptible.
The word there meant she looked at Sarai as worthless, as useless, looked at her as trash, right?
So Hagar, who was wife number two, is going, wife number one, you're trash.
I should be wife number one, because look, I can get pregnant.
I can bear children for the man, the head of the household.
And then Sarai got super mad, chewed out her husband, not unusual, and then now that, and she goes,
she goes, husband, I'm not mad that she's pregnant, per se, that was the plan,
but she goes, when she saw that she was pregnant, I became contemptible to her.
So what Sarai was mad about was Hagar's attitude, that she was just so haughty,
and really in that sense, putting Sarai down.
Now, Abram then dodged responsibility for all of it, like Neo in The Matrix,
and then it says that Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away.
Now that is the hinge of what we're going to be looking at today,
that Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away.
Last week, I made a comment at the end of the study that there might have been some type of domestic violence going on here,
and as I dug in and studied that word mistreated,
there are definitely specific nuances to this word that give us context.
The word in the Hebrew is nah, and it means to be bowed down,
like prostrate before someone that you respect.
It also means to be wretched, or to be emaciated, or afflicted, or oppressed.
The idea here is when it says Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away,
Sarai began to aggressively put Hagar in her place.
She got very aggressively vocal with her as the idea.
It's an emotional affliction where she would put her down,
where she would humiliate her, where she would say things about her
that forced the reality of the hierarchy into her life.
And so Hagar was very proudful in treating Sarai contemptible,
and then really what Sarai did when her husband said,
it's your fault, your problem, you deal with it,
she started treating Hagar the same or worse as Hagar was treating her.
And so we might call that verbal abuse today.
You know, when somebody is verbally abusive,
that's how Sarai was treating Hagar in response to how Hagar treated her.
So at the very end of verse 6, we read that Hagar then ran away from the situation,
likely in the direction of her homeland Egypt because she fled south into the Negev desert,
toward the desert of Shir, and God is going to step in and ask her,
what are you doing? This isn't a good idea, Hagar.
You're out here in the desert all alone, you're pregnant.
One, you could lose your baby because this is a dangerous place to be by yourself.
Two, Hagar could have been abducted, she could have been raped,
she could have been brought back in and resold as a slave somewhere.
And because she fled, the idea, the indication is that she fled secretly.
And so it might have been under the cover of night,
it might have been a situation where she didn't have all the supplies for the journey,
she just kind of took off. And so now she was in a very difficult place for her own safety.
Mercifully, she made it to a spring of water,
and that's where we're going to pick up the story in verse 7.
But I want us to be kind of putting ourselves into Hagar's mindset, right?
As she fled, as she was running, could she have been thinking things like,
does this God that Abram speaks about, does he know my situation?
Does he know how Sarai was treating me? Does he know about it?
Does he care about any of it? Is he looking? Why is this happening?
If he's such a true and great God, right?
She might have been thinking, the gods in Egypt never did this kind of stuff to me, right?
She was a slave in Egypt too, probably.
But she has this mindset of just emotional distress as she's running.
So now in verse 7 of Genesis 16, we pick up the story.
The angel of the Lord found her by a spring in the wilderness,
the spring on the way to Shur.
Now, for those who like the maps and stuff,
Shur is the desert that exists between Egypt here and Israel up here.
There's this whole desert region that's kind of in the north part of Sinai,
the Sinai Peninsula, and this was what was called the Shur Desert.
So as you went south from Israel, you got into the Negev Desert,
and then you went all the way through into what was called the Desert of Shur.
So the idea is that she was following the northern route all the way back to Egypt,
and then she found this spring, this natural spring of water.
But it says the angel of the Lord found her.
What does it imply when we say that somebody found somebody else?
It implies that one person was lost and somebody else was looking for them, right?
The angel of the Lord found her.
You see, we have to understand, especially in times of difficulty,
when we're going, am I abandoned, am I forgotten,
God is the one who comes after us,
not necessarily us going after him, especially in times of difficulty.
There's a lot of us who, when things get really tough,
our natural reaction is to want to run, avoid conflict, not deal with it, right?
We want to get out of the situation, and we don't often naturally
just immediately turn to God and say, God, what do you want me to do?
Give me counsel, why is this situation happening?
Help me understand. We just run.
But we have to understand that no matter where we try to run,
no matter how far we try to run from anything,
whether it's difficulties, legitimate difficulties, or illegitimate difficulties,
God is still there.
And when it comes to dealing with difficult situations,
God is always going to be right there with us, finding us,
so that he could then lead us to do the right thing in those situations that glorify him,
and those things in the situations that are going to be best for us.
So if you're trying to hide from God, you're going to lose,
because he is the universal champion of hide and seek, okay?
God will always find you.
Now that word found is very interesting,
because it means to succeed in reaching or arriving at a point in time or space.
The idea here is when it says the angel of the Lord found her,
it wasn't that the Lord was like, where'd she go, where'd she go?
It's the idea that God showed up in Hagar's life,
or you can put it this way, God was already there precisely at the moment
that Hagar needed him to be there.
God didn't show up in Abram's camp, in her life in that sense.
God didn't show up during her mistreatment of Sarai.
God didn't show up during Sarai's mistreatment of her.
It was after she fled, after she was some distance into the desert,
that God showed up, and the reason was because it was the exact point in time,
and Hagar was exactly in the state, the frame of mind,
for this lesson that she needed to learn to be learned.
And again, we gotta understand too, when we go, God, why haven't you showed up yet?
God, why aren't you here?
Or when we're running and then God shows up and you're like,
I didn't want you to show up.
God makes no mistakes.
There are no consequences with God.
We might see things as consequences, but God is omnipotent, he is almighty,
he knows all things, right?
So there's no consequence.
God wasn't out for a stroll in the desert, and he was like,
whoa, Hagar, how'd you get here?
He was exactly in the time and the moment that Hagar needed.
And it's just, God knows everything.
We can't forget that.
God knows everything, God knows when and where and how to approach us,
and he really, he tells Hagar as much.
Look at verse 8.
So the angel of the Lord finds her, and he says,
Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?
She replied, I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai.
Now, I want to address real quick who or what the angel of the Lord is,
because I know some of you are in here is like,
is he just going to pass that by and not say anything about that?
And so here you go.
If you want a really in-depth study on who this angel of the Lord is,
or might be, go to BibleThinker.org.
Pastor Mike Winger did a full-length study just dealing on answering this question.
And it was in a series he did, Jesus and the Old Testament.
I think it's the fourth video.
So if you want a full Bible study on this,
because it really can be a full Bible study, go look that up.
But for our time here, to answer questions like this,
the Bible is the best explainer of the Bible.
Okay, so when you look at something in the Bible,
and you go, what is that, what does that mean, who is that,
the best place to go is throughout scripture to find out
where this might be identified and clarified.
And so what we find throughout scripture is right here in Genesis,
right here in Genesis 16, it's going to tell us in verse 13
at the end of the story that Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her.
Well, here in verse 8, it tells us, he said,
Hagar, Slaver, Sarai, so on and so forth.
Well, who is he that is speaking to her?
Well, you go back to verse 7, it tells us it was the angel of the Lord
that found her at the spring.
So just here in Genesis 16, we see the connection that the angel of the Lord
is the Lord who is speaking to her.
The Lord who is speaking to her is God.
So this is what people call a theophany, right?
It is a manifestation of God that is tangible to the human senses, right?
There are times where people heard or saw something
and they were aware it was God, not always in a human form.
Sometimes it was a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire.
Sometimes it was that oven and that torch we talked about,
and other times it's a burning bush.
But it's a manifestation of God that the human senses can perceive.
Some people look at this and they call it a Christophany,
which is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ,
who is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity.
And there are a lot of reasons behind that possibility
that we don't have time to get into.
But for the sake of our study, the angel of the Lord,
it's definitely God that is appearing to her, okay?
So Hagar was found by and was speaking to the Lord God himself.
So he says to her a couple things here,
opening his address, that are telling Hagar,
yes, I know about you and your situation.
First thing he does is he uses her name, right?
He just, this angel appears, and first thing he does is say,
Hagar, I know who you are. I know your name.
Second thing he says is slave of Sarai, pointing out who she served,
pointing out who, what her place was in the idea of what she had been
led to or called to or the situation she found herself in.
So in case Hagar was traveling and going, does God even see me?
Does God even know anything about me?
He's like, yo, Hagar, slave of Sarai, I know all about you.
I know everything about your situation.
Now I believe he brought up the slave of Sarai part,
because remember, she had been raised up to be wife number two of Abram, right?
And that position is what caused Hagar to get all puffed up and everything,
because hey, I could get pregnant, you can't do that,
so I should be wife number one.
But God reminds her that she is the slave of Sarai.
I believe that was possibly in response to her own prideful mistreatment of Sarai,
where she was the one that mistreated Sarai first.
And God is subtly reminding her of this as he's about to address her in this whole situation.
Hey, Sarai, I just want to start with reminding you
that you're not completely innocent in this scenario, right?
That you are still the servant of Sarai.
Now he's not reminding her of this in the sense of like,
Hagar, you're just a dirty slave, right?
That's not what he's saying, but he's indicating what I see here
is that you lifted yourself up way higher than Sarai did within the hierarchy of the household,
and then you treated her badly first, you mistreated her first.
This is not to justify Sarai's mistreatment of her,
it's just to remind her that there's two sides to this situation here,
and you're not completely innocent.
Because remember, God says, where are you going and where are you coming from?
And she's like, I'm running from my mistress.
The idea is that she's bad and I'm fleeing that, and that's what's going on.
It's one of those situations that come up a lot of times in counseling,
where I might be dealing with a couple, talking to a couple.
And of course, when couples are having a very difficult scenario of arguments or conflict in their marriage,
it's all about they're the only one that's wrong.
And the other side goes, they're the only one that's wrong.
And that is the root of the problems, that nothing I've done is wrong,
but you are responding improperly, you are responding incorrectly, right?
And so often, the best way to lead to healing in those types of situations is to say,
stop focusing on what the other person is or isn't doing, let's deal with you.
Let's deal with your error.
Let's deal with you owning, taking responsibility for what you did,
before we try and go deal with what they are doing.
And when both sides of an equation start doing that,
there is a grace and a mercy that enters into the situation of like,
okay, I'm wrong too, how do we fix everything that's going on?
This is what I see happening here with Hagar as God is reminding her,
you are a slave to Sarai, okay?
Now, God then asks her these interesting questions,
where have you come from and where are you going?
Really, to summarize that, God is like, what are you doing?
Has God ever showed up in your response to a situation,
whether you are running or throwing a temper tantrum or something,
and God shows up and goes, what are you doing?
It's the most kind way to say, you are acting dumb right now.
You are acting up, you are throwing a fit, you are acting out.
Why are you out here? Why are you running is what he is saying.
We have to understand when God asks a question, it's not because he doesn't know.
He knows that you are out here, you are out there,
and when God asks a question, it's not because he doesn't know.
He knows everything.
When God asks a question, it's because he wants us to think through what he is asking us.
So he says, Hagar, where have you come from?
Think about that. Where are you going? Think about that.
And I believe the intent was for Hagar to go, okay, where have I come from?
Think about it, as you are out here in the desert,
next to a spring just so you could get some water.
Okay, you came from a place where you lived, where you served, where you worked,
where you are a slave, yes, but you have been taken care of for 10 plus years at this point.
You get to be the servant to the first lady of the house.
And again, we have to be able to go, oh, but she is a slave.
We have to be able to understand the context, the difference of that in those times,
to understand why God is asking her these questions and the conclusion he is trying to get her to come to.
Now, when he said, where are you going and where have you come from,
her answer was essentially, I don't know what I am doing.
I am just running from a bad situation.
And so as she is thinking about it, she is like, yes, I have got caught up in this plan of my mistress.
It led to this horrible mistreatment of me.
But if I am honest, I kind of started the mistreatment first.
Now, that doesn't justify Sarah's actions, but again, Hagar, focus on what you did.
Take responsibility for your actions first.
And then where am I going?
Well, I don't know. I didn't think about it. I didn't plan very well.
I am out here in the desert by myself.
And really the implication of that for us is before you ran,
before you decided how you are going to deal with the situation on your own counsel,
did you seek the Lord? Did you ask him what he wanted you to do?
Did you stop to think maybe I am in this situation,
maybe God has allowed me to be in this situation because he wants me to learn something.
He is trying to mold or hone my character.
But instead, we will be running somewhere, doing whatever, and God is like, where are you going?
Do you even know what your plan is?
Do you think that this plan is going to benefit you?
Because sometimes when we just flee without thinking about it or just trying to avoid a situation,
we can find ourselves avoiding one bad situation to put ourselves in a worse situation.
And we have to be very careful about doing that.
Because the real need we have in a bad situation is not to escape.
It is to seek the Lord and to be obedient to what he is telling us to do,
because his way is the only right way always.
So, verse 9.
He says, where are you going?
She goes, I don't know, I am just running.
And then the angel of the Lord said to her, go back to your mistress and submit to her authority.
The angel of the Lord said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring and there will be too many to count.
Now this is a difficult verse for some people.
It was a difficult verse for me to wrestle with because if she was in this situation
where she is being verbally abused and mistreated,
why on earth would God tell her to go back to that?
Right? That is a hard question.
And it doesn't say why.
So we have to speculate based upon things we know about the culture, the time,
God's character and all this type of stuff.
And one of the first places is when we read the stories that come after this,
there is no scriptural indication of any kind that Sarai continued to mistreat Hagar.
There is none.
So we can't assume that God was saying go back into the situation
where you are going to continue to be mistreated and verbally abused.
Now it also doesn't say that didn't happen, right?
But the assumption is we can't fill in blanks that it doesn't tell us.
And then on top of that, when he says go back,
I would think, because this is what I would do,
but God don't you know I was mistreated there?
But God, you know, this person, they wronged me, they did these terrible things to me.
They deserve to be punished.
Why don't you go deal with them first?
Why don't you take care of them and what they did to me?
And again, I think God, when he sees these situations,
knowing both what is happening, what has happened and what will happen,
his spirit is always the one that is saying look, there are two sides to this problem.
And we are dealing with you.
Not the other person.
We have to trust God to deal with the other person.
God is dealing with us when he is talking to us.
And we need to stay there and say okay, what did I do wrong?
How did I contribute?
What have I done in this situation?
Because what Sarah did was indeed wrong.
But Hagar was no innocent player in this scenario.
The way she treated Sarah is contemptible
as inferior, that was mistreatment as well.
The attitude implies verbal abuse on her part to Sarah,
who is the first lady of the house.
Now, God always prefers us in our relationships one another to seek peace.
Not to run, to seek peace, to seek reconciliation.
That is always the goal.
It is not always possible, I understand that.
But that is what our Lord wants us to do, to seek peace.
Because what did he do when we were his enemy?
He sought peace with us.
He went and laid down his life that we would be reconciled to him.
That example of love is what God wants us to emulate as his people.
Now, are there times and situations where it is time to go?
Where separation might be necessary for a time or those types of things?
Yes, I do believe that happens.
But when God says so, does that make sense?
If God says, hey, I need you to step out for a while,
then God is telling you to do that and do that.
But that is not what is happening in Hagar's situation.
She just decided on her own to run away.
So he tells her to go back to her mistress and submit to her authority.
That word submit there is very interesting because here you got Sarah mistreated Hagar.
And then God says, go back to her and submit.
The root word for both of those is exactly the same.
Very interesting, right?
But in Sarah's situation, it was Sarah mistreating her,
forcing her into a low situation, humiliating her.
Here, as God is telling Hagar to go back and submit to her authority,
it means to place yourself into a low state.
What he is telling Hagar is she humiliated you, and that was wrong,
but you humiliated her first, so you are both wrong in this situation.
And this is what I am telling you to do to really to fix it.
Go back and now humble yourself under her authority.
You are both being prideful and stupid, right?
But you are her slave, she is the first lady of the house.
That is the reality of the situation, so I want you to go back and humble yourself before her.
And really what is unsaid here, but I believe God is implying this, is I am going to deal with her.
You do what I am telling you to do, you let me handle the other person.
And if we did more of that in our troubles, our friendships, our relationships, our marriages,
more of that, I think we would just see more peace.
We would see more healing, we would see more just God restoring and reconciling things the way he desires to.
But we could be so just holding on to, I have been wronged and I need justice.
And I often remind myself when I am feeling that way about a situation,
that if God said that to me, I would be dead.
If God was like, I need justice, you broke my law, boom, you are done.
But that is not what God did. God said grace, mercy, patience, long suffering, kindness, gentleness, right?
This is what God gave to me and so I want to be able to give that to others.
Now sometimes what that means is that God will say, hey, I want you to go back to a situation you otherwise want to run from.
I want you to go back into a situation where you are quite honestly just as wrong as they are.
But when it comes to submitting to authority, I have placed that authority there to mold and shape you.
And so I want you to go back and humble yourself in that so that I could then continue to do the work in your life I am doing
and I want you to trust me with the work I am doing in their life.
And that is really what it comes down to. Trust me, God says, not your own wisdom.
Trust me and my plans and my leading.
And that is really what we need in these difficult situations to seek the Lord first and then to submit to his authority.
And we don't learn those things. We don't learn how to do that when our first reaction is to run from a situation.
When he hasn't said, I need you to step out and separate for a while.
And then we go, but God, you don't understand.
And that is another one I think God goes, say that again and think about it.
God, you don't understand.
You thinking about it?
God, omnipotent, all-knowing, creator of everything, the knower of how many hairs are on your head,
the knower of your thoughts and the intentions of your heart, I don't understand.
That is an impossibility.
And so we go, okay God, you understand. I don't understand.
Help me to understand.
Now there are some people who never really grow in the Lord because they just have this habit of running from difficult situations when God hasn't said to.
And again, we have to go, God, is there something that you have me in this situation for?
Now again, of course, I'm not talking about a situation where like your life is in danger.
Pray, but seek safety.
But these difficult situations where the person isn't treating you nice or talking to you nice or yelling at you or being this type of mistreatment that Sarah is doing and Hagar did to her, God, what do you want me to do?
Some people, they had problems with their parents as a teen and so they just learned how to rebel.
And that's how they respond to everything in their life.
Sometimes people have conflict in their marriage and they develop the habit of, I'm just going to bail.
I'm just going to run. Guys, we can be especially good with this, right?
We process things differently, right? So things get heated.
Sometimes we shut down because we have to think everything through before we say anything, right?
But we'll say things like, I'm done with this conversation and leave.
And what does that do? It just makes her mad.
You know, it's like, we've got to learn how these things work together so that we pursue these things in a kind way as God would have us do.
Some people join a church and then they don't get along with some people or the church doesn't do things the way they want them to do and so they quit.
They leave. I'm done with this.
Sometimes people go and seek counseling for a situation, but the counselor is not on my side.
I don't like what they said, so they stop going to counseling.
It's just bail, bail, bail.
And that's not what God wants and you're definitely not going to learn the great lessons God has for you by immediately removing yourself from every difficult situation.
There are lessons that God wants to teach us.
There are lessons that God is bringing into our lives through being in submission to the authority structures that he has placed around us in our lives.
And oftentimes those positions are to smooth out our own rough edges.
We always think that we're the perfect ones who never do anything wrong.
And God's going, nah, you're messed up too.
And so some of you today may be in trying situations.
You may have a situation in your life.
Right now as I'm talking you're going, oh yeah, this is the one I'm in and gosh, I just I have bailed or I want to bail.
I just don't want to deal with it anymore.
And I would suggest you to consider that maybe you haven't submitted yourself to God's direction yet and that's why things haven't been improving.
Maybe you've heard God's direction, but you're not doing it and that is not submitting to God's direction.
The way of obedience is hard.
It's difficult to to lay our life down, to submit ourselves, to humble ourselves.
It's hard to do.
But I can tell you this with with absolute assurance, the way of disobedience is harder.
The way of disobedience is even more difficult and leads to more discord.
So verse 11.
We saw how he said, this is what I want you to do to go back.
He then tells her like, I'm going to bless you.
Right. This is verse 10.
Actually, I'm going to bless you.
It's really interesting because the blessing he gives her is very similar to part of the blessing he gave Abram.
Right. Abram, your offspring are going to be too many to count.
And he tells her the same thing.
The idea here is God saying, look, follow me, follow my direction, do what I'm telling you to do, because I have blessing for you when you follow my leading.
Here she is risking the life of her baby out in the desert.
And God's like, this is not the plan.
This is this isn't going to be good for you.
This is going to lead to even worse situations.
I want you to go back and submit yourself to my authority by submitting to the authority of Sarai.
And I'm going to bless your kids.
Nobody else in scripture got this promise.
No other woman has ever gotten this promise as far as scripture is concerned, except Hagar.
So verse 11, the angel, the Lord said to her, you have conceived and you will have a son.
You will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your cry of affliction.
You know what it didn't say there.
It doesn't say God heard her.
You know what it didn't say there. It doesn't say God heard her prayer.
It said God heard her cry of affliction.
Hang on to that people.
Sometimes we don't cry out to the Lord because we're just so confused and so hurt and so overwhelmed.
But God sees you.
God hears your cry of affliction.
He hears the cry of your heart.
We don't know if Hagar cried out to the Lord.
Lord, right? It doesn't tell us.
But we can be sure that even if we don't say the words, Lord, please hear me, and we're just groaning in our heart,
we can be sure that God sees us and he hears us.
He knows.
Take rest in that.
And not only does he see and hear our affliction and the trials and the sufferings that we're in,
he sees the future after the affliction is over.
He sees what's going to happen past it.
All of it.
We obey him.
We follow his leading.
He's like, this is what's going to happen.
Just trust me.
Trust my way.
Now Hagar, incidentally, her name means flea.
How would you like to be named Flea?
Flight.
Run away.
My name is run away, right?
But he tells her, you're going to have a son named Ishmael.
Ishmael means God hears.
Right?
Because she's sitting there going, God's heard me.
I'm experiencing it.
God's heard me. I'm experiencing it right now.
He's going, so you're going to name your son God hears.
I think that was on purpose because she's going to go back to the situation.
She doesn't know right now if it's going to be the same or different than how it was when she left.
But he's going, look, I want you to go back and then I want you to, you're going to have this child and I want you to name him God hears.
So that every time as this child is growing up, she's calling out his name.
Ishmael, don't touch that.
Ishmael, come here.
Ishmael, listen to your mom.
Ishmael, listen to your dad.
What she's saying is God hears.
God hears.
Do you think she's ever going to forget this experience?
Not at all.
As she's calling this out over and over.
And now this is subjective or speculative, but I believe that it also reminded Sarai.
Every time she would hear Hagar call out for this child, Abram call out for the child, maybe she was calling out to the child that she would be reminded that God heard this woman, Sarai, that you mistreated so much she ran away.
God heard her.
God sees her.
And God told her to come back and submit to you.
So, Sarai, stop being a jerk.
That's speculative, but I believe that's very likely what happened in here.
And so verse 12, God goes to give her, go on to give her a prophecy of who this man would be.
This man will be like a wild donkey.
His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him.
He will settle near all his relatives.
Excuse me.
So wild donkey, right?
What does that mean?
If you know anything about a wild donkey, donkeys in general, but specifically an untamed wild donkey, they're very strong.
They're very independent.
They're very stubborn.
Right?
Have you guys seen the picture in a movie somewhere where somebody's trying to pull a donkey by the bridle and it's like resisting, right?
That's what donkeys are known for, stubborn.
But a wild donkey is stubborn and untamed, right?
Nobody tells this man what to do is the idea.
And then he says his hand will be against everyone, meaning he's going to be in conflict with everyone around him.
Probably that's going to come from his independence and his stubbornness, right?
Where he's just not going to get along with people because it's just going to be constantly his way or the highway.
And then it says he will settle near all his relatives.
It's like, okay, why is that an important detail?
It's like, look, he's never going to move out of the house.
No, that's not what it's saying.
That phrase settle near, there's some disagreement on how that should be translated.
But there's really two ways that it could be translated in the Hebrew.
It means that he will settle to the east of his relatives or it can mean he will settle in opposition to his relatives, right?
Now, if you think of who the descendants of Ishmael are, it's the Arab people that have descended from Ishmael.
And God did indeed bless the line as he told Hagar he would.
That the Arab peoples have flourished and grown as cultures and all that.
But they did indeed settle east of Israel, right, over here in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and those places.
But they also settled in opposition to, meaning in conflict with, because the Jews and the Arabs, they've had conflict ever since, right?
Constantly fighting against each other.
This sibling rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael.
It'll end one day because God will end it.
But man, it's caused so much distress over the centuries.
So God saw Hagar in her distress.
He saw her in her affliction.
He saw her in it and was there at exactly the right time that she would hear him and listen to him.
And we can't forget this about trials.
Hagar might not have ever seen the Lord if it wasn't for that trial.
It was the trial that caused her to flee.
Now, we could say, well, no, God could have appeared to her in any other way.
Sure, that's possible.
But what we have here with this word God found her is that it was precisely here in this moment, at this time, in her state of mind that God revealed himself to her.
And she's going to respond positively.
But we can't forget that the difficult situations that happen in our lives, sometimes God is using those to open us up to a fresh vision of who he is.
Right?
It's oftentimes in the greatest struggles of our life we learn things about God we didn't know before.
We come to a greater understanding of him and his faith and his patience and his love and his kindness.
Right?
It's often in the midst of these things, especially I don't know about you, but in my life where I'm in a difficult situation because somebody wronged me and I'm, and then God goes, what did you do?
Okay, maybe I'm not as perfect as I thought.
Verse 13.
So she named the Lord who spoke to her, you are Elroy.
For she said, in this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?
And that is why the well is called Beir Lehi Roy.
It is between Kadesh and Bered.
So Hagar is really blown away by this experience, right?
She named it the Lord.
So something about this, she understood that it was God she was talking to.
She understood that it was the God of Abram.
The one she had been hearing about for 10 years watching Abram and his family do what they did.
And she's like, look, it says she asked a question.
Have I actually seen the one who sees me?
And the answer to that is yes.
And that's why she responds with you are Elroy.
Now Elroy means the God who sees me.
Not God sees.
You notice it's personal.
You are the God who sees me.
You are the God who knows me.
Now it's another blessing for Hagar, she is the only person in all of scripture who has the privilege of naming God.
Nobody else has this privilege.
She got to give God a name.
And he didn't go, no, you can't do that.
He accepted it.
What a high privilege she has.
Now she's like, in this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?
We're like, oh, yeah, seen and sees is the same word.
No, it's not in the Hebrew.
When she says have I seen him, that simply means to see with your eyeballs.
Have I physically seen God?
The one who sees me.
That means to be present with and to pay attention to.
You know the phrase we say today when someone goes, I see you.
I see you.
They're not going, I see you with my eyeball.
They're like, I'm aware.
I'm aware of what you're doing.
I'm aware of what you're going through.
I'm aware of your circumstance.
I see you.
She's going, have I seen with my eyeballs the one who sees my whole life?
Who knows everything about me?
Who knows my circumstance and my situation?
And the answer again, yes, you are El Roy.
Then of course it says this is why this place is called Beir Laha Roy.
That means well of the living one who sees me.
And I think it was named that.
I think she was a part of this whole story here because again, she was running back to Egypt.
And this well is called the well of the living one.
Why?
Because she had an experience with a deity right now that she never experienced in Egypt.
Why?
Because those gods are false.
They're not real.
All the sacrifice and everything they would do to all these false gods, nothing ever happened.
And then now she had an experience with one who was called and claimed to be a deity.
And he actually talked to me.
And he actually sees me.
It actually is confirmed.
He knows everything about me.
And so they named this well this name so it would never be forgotten.
So when God meets us in our trials as he did with Hagar and we open his word or somebody says something,
we just have a sense that God is like, hey, what's up?
What are you doing?
Do we realize that he sees us?
That he sees everything about us?
He sees our need.
He sees our actual need.
Right?
Hagar needed some things in this moment.
She thought she needed to get away.
But God knew that one, she needed to know she wasn't alone, that she wasn't forgotten,
that she wasn't abandoned.
And that's why when he showed up, he said, Hagar.
She needed to know that I see in this that she needed to know she wasn't completely innocent in this situation,
that she needed to take ownership for her own participation.
And that's why he said, Hagar, slave of Sarai.
But more importantly, I think she needed to know for herself that God was real,
that this God Abram's been talking about for 10 years, yeah, he is indeed the one true living God,
that he's in charge of and control of all things, including her situation, including her life,
including every circumstance and was then therefore the one she should submit her life to and be obedient to.
Now, yeah, Abram and Sarai, they may have come up with this human plan to see God's promises fulfilled.
And we talked about the error of that.
God never told them to do this thing with Hagar.
But it's great encouragement, encouragement for me to see that even when we mess things up,
even when we get ahead of God, even when we try to bring God's plans of fruition through our own efforts,
God will still in response step in and still accomplish his purposes.
That doesn't mean go mess everything up so God can step in, right?
We want to be obedient.
But what I see here is Hagar was thinking she was more than she was,
and Sarai was acting totally inappropriate for who she was.
And so as Hagar was putting Sarai down and holding her as contemptible,
and then Sarai was putting Hagar down and humiliating her, God steps in and puts everybody in their place.
She's wife one, regardless of how you feel about it.
The child in your belly, Hagar, doesn't change that.
You need to respect her because she is the one that's in authority over you.
And then I really do believe that God spoke to Sarai at some point and was like, hey, stop being a jerk,
because like it or not, she carries your husband's child.
So don't treat her this way. It's wrong.
Now verse 15, so Hagar gave birth to Abram's son, and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael.
Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
You notice there, it says Abram named him.
What that tells us is that when Hagar got back to camp,
at some point she told Abram all about this experience.
I imagine the possible joy and excitement of that experience overshadowed the, oh my gosh, is Sarai still going to be a jerk to me?
Because her expression, you're Elroy. I met God.
I picture in my head again, this is speculative, but when she got back to camp, Abram, I met him.
He appeared to me. We talked.
Abram's like, whoa, really? Because I saw him a couple times already too. Yeah.
You know, and just the experience of that moment, but then it's Abram who in obedience to God,
in acknowledgement of the God who sees him, and now he knows sees Hagar,
and just affirms that he sees everything, says I'm going to be obedient to him,
and names that child Ishmael.
And I believe that was a reminder to Abram too,
that every time that child's name was called out, he would remember God sees affliction.
God sees wrongdoing. God sees when we try and get ahead of him and make plans to force his promises.
God sees the thoughts of our heart.
But even when we mess up, God will intervene, always calling us back to obedience,
always calling us back in every situation.
I read a story about a little girl who had a hamster. Anybody ever had a hamster? Yeah.
And it was trying to gnaw its way out of a cage.
And the thought is the hamster was going, if I could just get out of this cage, it's confinement.
If I could just get out of these things that are restricting me, I'll have life, I'll have freedom.
I'll be able to just have my hamster family and pursue my hamster career,
and do everything every hamster ever wanted to do.
But what that hamster didn't know is just a few feet away under the table was the family dog,
waiting expectantly for that hamster to jump.
You know, we have to be careful about trying to break free from the confinements, the trials,
the things that God places us under, the things he's allowed us to be in,
because we think if we just run from this, we will be free.
If we just run from this, we will really live. If we just run from this, everything will be better.
And God is the one who knows the truth of that.
God sees our real need, and it's not our escape, it's not our freedom, our real need is Jesus.
God knows that. God says you need me in your life, and so that you know who I am,
I sent my son to this earth to live a life, to go, that's how we're supposed to be,
that's how we're supposed to treat each other, that's who God's created us to be.
That is the example I'm supposed to follow in my marriage, in my friendships,
as an employee at work, everywhere. I'm supposed to be like him.
He is who I need to turn to him, to share with him, to go to him for counsel,
to listen to him, to submit to him, and then do what he says to do, the way he says to do it.
God sees us. He especially sees the affliction we find ourselves in.
And sometimes we say if affliction and distress and bad situations,
if they could just cease to exist, life would be better.
But a French writer said this, Christ did not come to do away with suffering.
He did not come to explain it. He came to fill it with his presence.
And those are the lessons God tries to teach us and allows us to go through these situations for,
that we could learn to believe and to realize and to react with the truth
that God is there even in that moment, that God has not forgotten us,
that God has not abandoned us, that his Spirit is with us.
And our call is to turn to him and say, okay, help me to understand God,
teach me what you want me to learn, help me to respond and react the way you want me to,
that I would be more like you, that I would have a peace that surpasses all understanding,
that I have a joy that nobody, even myself, can comprehend because it's from you,
even in my difficult situations.
And so if you're suffering today, my prayer for you this morning is that you see the God who sees you,
because he's here right now in this very moment.
Trust him, receive him. Let's pray.
Father, we are so grateful for your word.
We're grateful for the continual reminder of who you are.
God, even in the face of our mistakes, you're faithful.
God, your word says that when we are faithless, you are faithful.
In God, the story of Hagar, who found herself in a very difficult situation, Lord,
who thought running away would be the solution.
God, I believe you saw that running away was actually going to create greater problems for her.
And that, Lord, the greatest thing for her in her character and her growth
and everything you wanted to do in and through her life, it was to humble herself,
to accept responsibility for her wrong in the situation,
and trusting you to deal with the other party and their wrong in the situation.
That, God, we know that when we are the ones to first take the step to do the right thing, Lord,
sometimes it's hard, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it's scary.
But, Lord, when we're following you, we are blessed.
When we seek you and obey you, we are blessed.
Help us to know that and to trust that, Lord, that we wouldn't run as our knee-jerk reaction to any difficulty.
But we would understand that you use these things to mature us, to change our heart,
that we would be more like you, that we would then be people in this world to shine the glory of who you are,
that others would become people who know you.
God, help us in our conflicts and our relationships, Lord,
that we get out of our flesh and do things the way you're calling us to do,
that, Lord, there would be peace and reconciliation and joy.
God, help us to hear you, to see you, because we know you see us, Lord, and we know you hear us.
May we take great comfort in that, God, trusting in you for all things in every situation.
We love you and we thank you so much. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Let's worship, church.