When We're Tired of Waiting

It is no secret that most of us are bad at waiting.

While humans have never been great at being patient, the instant availability of so much of what we want has only made our impatience worse.

We can get almost any food delivered to our house in less than an hour. We can have same-day pickup from Walmart and Target, and if they don’t have what we want, Amazon will have it to our door in just a few days.

We don’t have to wait for commercials or for our show to come on at a certain time anymore because our streaming services show us what we want when we want to watch it.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that is all bad. These same technologies allow us to get life-saving information to people instantly in case of a weather emergency or use drones to airlift blood to remote hospitals in Africa when someone needs a transfusion. They allow us to at least connect with family and friends at some level when we are separated by distance. They can do a lot of good.

However, the negative side of this is that we may find ourselves losing more of our willingness to wait on God to work.

God often does some of his greatest work through long, slow, difficult seasons of waiting, and that is something we don’t often like.

As we look at Genesis 16-17 this morning, we are going to see three ways we might respond when we are tired of waiting on God to fix something.

As we look at Abram, Sarai, and her servant Hagar, we are going to see three different reactions we may have when we get tired of waiting.

There are likely more, but I believe these three are fairly common. As we will see, each reaction has its own consequences, and in each one, we again see the faithfulness of God to work in spite of the flaws of his people.

Let’s set the stage. As chapter 16 opens, we realize it has been ten years since God brought Abram to the promised land and said he would have innumerable offspring. He is now 85, his wife is 75, and they still don’t have a child.

Sarai, Abram’s wife, is tired of waiting. In her actions here, we see what happens when we:

1) Get ahead of God.

Let’s read 16:1-3.

This was a fairly common practice in that region in that time. If the wife couldn’t have kids, she could give one of her servants to her husband as a wife, and that child would somewhat be counted as the wife’s. We will see this happen a few different times in Genesis.

However, the fact that it was common practice didn’t make it right.

In Genesis 2, God makes it clear that his design for the home is one man and one woman for one lifetime. Any deviation outside of that is sinful and brings about pain.

We will see that here as we see how Sarai’s plan worked out.

However, Sarai seems to have gotten tired of waiting on God to fulfill the promise to give Abram kids, and so she tried to come up with her own solution.

Interestingly, this would actually have fulfilled the promise God made up to this point. He had promised that Abram would have a child, but he doesn’t say that it will be Sarah’s child until chapter 17.

That should have been implied because of God’s design for marriage, but he hadn’t explicitly said it yet.

So, Sarai is tired of waiting and decides to get ahead of God and fix this on her own.

How does that play out? Read verses 4-6...

It doesn’t take long for the whole plan to spiral out of control.

Abram took Hagar as his wife, and she was able to get pregnant.

Once she found out she was pregnant, it says that Sarah “became contemptible to her.”

That word “contemptible” is related to the word “curse” in 12:3, which will be important in a bit when we get to Hagar.

We don’t know exactly what happened, but the context seems to point to the fact that Hagar looked down on Sarai because she had been able to quickly do what Sarai had been unable to do for decades. She was carrying the baby that Sarai couldn’t.

You can imagine the looks, the gloating, the snarky comments that these two women might have exchanged.

It is interesting to see how Sarai responds. This was her idea, but Sarai blames Abram in verse 5...

Are you noticing anything here, by the way? Can you think of another time in Genesis where a woman was tempted to do something that went against God’s instructions? Can you think about a time where she took something and gave it to her husband and then everyone started blaming everyone else?

There are a number of parallels to the account of when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden. It started with the wife and the husband didn’t stop her, and in the end, everything was a mess.

This reflects a tendency we all have had since the very first sin: “God isn’t doing what I want, so I am going to figure it out on my own.”

I have been honest, but I haven’t gotten that promotion, so it’s time to play hardball, even if I have to lie to get it.

I will be faithful to the Lord when I get my degree and a job, but for now, I may need to cheat in this class or I am never going to make it.

I have been waiting and keeping myself pure for that girl or guy God wants me to marry, but maybe I need to compromise so I can finally find a relationship.

I have been trying to hold this marriage together, but my spouse isn’t responding like I want, so maybe I need to look elsewhere. Surely, God wants me to be happy, right?

I am doing this, and it isn’t happening in my time or my way, so I am going to get ahead of God and fix it myself.

Look at the damage this causes for Sarai and Abram. Beyond the fact that this was sin that disrupted their fellowship with God, it results in heaping on additional shame on Sarai because Hagar could do what she couldn’t.

It causes additional tension in their marriage, and Sarai responds by blaming Abram and mistreating Hagar so badly she runs away while she is pregnant.

Beyond all that, the child that Hagar is carrying will fight against Abram’s other descendants for the rest of history until Jesus comes back and sets it all right! That’s not an exaggeration, by the way. The son, Ishmael, fathers nations whose descendants become the Arab peoples, including the Palestinians who are still fighting with the Israelites today.

When you or I get ahead of God, it may not have geo-political ramifications, but it will always disrupt our fellowship with God and can destroy our relationships with others.

Are you tired of waiting? Sarai would caution you against getting ahead of God’s plan and trying to fix it on your own.

Instead,

Proverbs 3:5–6 CSB

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

There isn’t a time limit on that command. In fact, God will have Abram and Sarai wait around another 15 years before he will finally bring his promise to pass.

We have to wait on him instead of getting ahead.

There are more ways we can respond negatively when we ar tired of waiting.

When we are waiting on God, we may find ourselves in a painful place.

In those moments, there is a temptation to, in an ungodly way...

2) Get out of the situation.

This is how Hagar responds.

Before we even read the next few verses, I want to make a couple items clear, although we don’t have time to get into a ton of detail around them:

This passage is not an endorsement of either slavery or polygamy. As we have said, having more than one wife causes tremendous problems that continue to this day. There is not an explicit condemnation of slavery in this passage, and although it still wasn’t right, remember that slavery in those days was often different than the slavery we are familiar with in America.

Also, this is not a command for an abused individual to return to or stay in an abusive relationship. We don’t know exactly how Sarai was mistreating Hagar, and there are some aspects of this story that make it unique. If you are in an abusive relationship, do what you need to do to get out and get safe. You can talk to me, our deacons, or our wives, and we will do what we can to help.

With that said, though, there is a challenge for us in this passage, so let’s read it.

Hagar has been cursing Sarai, and Sarai has been mistreating Hagar in response.

Pick up in verse 6-13...

Hagar is in a difficult situation, and about 15-16 years from this point, God is going to send Hagar away from Abraham.

However, it’s not time yet, so God calls her to go back to Sarai.

We are going to come back to this section at the end of the message and focus more her conversation with this one called “the angel of the LORD.”

For now, though, let’s recognize that waiting on God required her to return to and remain in a difficult place.

She had been so badly mistreated that she felt her best option was to run away, but God was calling her to go back.

She had to go back because she had removed herself from the blessings God promised to Abram.

Remember that in 12:3, God said he would curse those who cursed Abram and bless those who blessed him?

Hagar had cursed Abram’s wife, and as such, had put herself into a place where God would not bless her.

By returning, she was coming back to a place where God could bless her in spite of the adversity.

Obviously, there are specifics for her circumstance that are different than yours or mine.

However, the principle we can see here is that there are times we need to lean into painful circumstances.

They may go on longer than we want them to, but God may be accomplishing something in the waiting that we cannot rush.

Are you willing to stick it out to see what God does?

Again, if you are in an abusive situation, seek to get out and get safe.

However, we can’t just run when it gets hard, as tempting as it may be.

Sometimes, we have to stay somewhere painful while we wait for God to lead.

Are you willing to do that?

Maybe you aren’t like Sarai, so you’re not going to do something rash to get ahead. Maybe you aren’t like Hagar, and you aren’t going to run away.

There is a third way we react when we’re tired of waiting, and that’s what we see in Abram. We just...

3) Give in to the pressure.

Abram doesn’t say much in this passage, and the focus seems to be more on the women in his life.

However, his silence and his what little he does say speak volumes.

Abram, like Adam before him, falls into the trap of passivity.

Instead of leading his home and standing firm while they were waiting, it seems that he just gives up on waiting and gives in to the pressure Sarai was putting on him.

He gives in to the pressure from his wife to get ahead of God.

He gives in to the cultural expectations of his day.

He takes a second wife, which God didn’t intend. He fathers a child and divides his home.

Then, instead of standing up for the woman who was caring for his child, he puts Sarai back in charge of her as her slave.

In giving in, he was like the commanding officer the men spoke of in the HBO series Band of Brothers.

They described one of their leaders this way: “He wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions; he was a bad leader because he made no decisions.”

Abram made a decision alright, but it was to stop leading his family and let others tell him what to do.

We always need to be open to godly advice from others, especially from our wives.

That’s not what this was, though, and Abram should have stood up and stopped it.

By giving in and going along, he set a pattern his descendants would follow and he started a lineage of people who would fight with the children of Isaac to this very day.

It can be easy for us to do the same. We’re tired of waiting, so we just give in and go with the flow of what others tell us to do.

Reject the passivity that calls you to turn from what God has said.

We see this even further if you turn the page over to chapter 17...

There is a thirteen year break in between chapters 16 and 17, and God still hasn’t given Abram a child besides the one he had with Hagar.

We don’t have time to get into the details, but when God speaks to Abram again, he reiterated his promise and even changed Abram’s name to Abraham.

Not only that, he made it crystal clear that Abraham and Sarah were going to have a child of their own.

Pick up in 17:15-19.

A quarter of a century has passed since God made his promise to Abram to make him a great nation.

It almost seems like Abraham’s faith is wavering here, doesn’t it?

“I mean, seriously? You’re going to let us have a kid?” which is followed up by the statement about Ishmael - “If only Ishmael were acceptable to you!”

I don’t know his motives, and I want to be careful when I get into conjecture, but I almost since a note of defeat.

“God, we’ve been waiting for 25 years. I don’t want to get my hopes up again. Can’t you just bless Ishmael?”

There’s no risk there. He’s already been born, he’s Abraham’s kid, why not just settle for that?

In both of these accounts, it appears that Abram is giving in.

We are often tempted to do the same.

We give in to the pressure and compromise like Abraham did, and we give in to despair and give up hoping that God will actually fulfill his promises like he said he will.

We give up believing he is going to actually give us his peace or save this person we’re praying for or change this situation because we just can’t be disappointed again.

There’s a caution here, because Abraham was giving up on a clear promise from God.

We don’t always have a promise that God will heal every marriage, save our children, give us that job, or whatever.

We do have a promise in Scripture, though, that he is the God who never changes.

Here’s the truth we cling to when we feel like we have been waiting forever for God to move or work or change: He is the God who hears and the God who sees.

Let’s go back to the account of Hagar for a minute.

In 16:7, we are introduced to a figure known as “the angel of the Lord”

When you look at that phrase throughout the Old Testament, there is something different about this particular angel. While we cannot be certain, a number of scholars believe that the angel of the LORD may actually have been Jesus appearing to people before he came in the flesh through Mary.

That’s supported in this text by the fact that he says “I will greatly multiply…” If he was a regular angel, we would expect him to say “the LORD will multiply” since the angel isn’t actually doing that.

Not only that, she talks like she has seen the LORD in verse 13.

Although God has spoken multiple times in history to this point, the first person who sees the angel of the Lord is a mistreated Egyptian slave who has run from her master.

In her encounter with the angel of the Lord, she discovers two beautiful truths. Look at verse 11 again...

“Ishmael” means “God hears.” What did he hear? Hagar’s cry of affliction.

Not only that, but jump down to verse 13. She says of God - “You are El-roi,” which means “God sees me.”

In spite of her desire to run away from the situation God was using for her good, she learns that God is the one who hears her cries and who sees her.

With all they had been through, in all the years of waiting, it seems that Sarah and Abraham had forgotten who God is.

He is the same God who hears our cries and sees us.

He’s the God who is good enough, kind enough, gracious enough to come rescue us when we get ahead or get out or give in.

Don’t get me wrong—there were real consequences for each of these individuals that God didn’t remove. Sarah and Hagar still seem to have animosity toward each other that lasts for the next 15+ years. Abraham has to send a son away since Ishmael wasn’t the son of the promise God had made.

Yet, the faithful God still works through their flaws to show that he is the one who sees and hears.

Maybe that’s where you are this morning.

God hasn’t answered prayers the way you thought he would, and you feel like you are tired of waiting.

You’re tempted to get ahead of him and take matters into your own hands, or you’re tempted to run away from the very thing God is using to shape you into Christlikeness, or you are just tempted to give in and go with the flow.

Know that he is the same God who met Hagar in the wilderness.

He is the God who has heard your cries, and he sees you.

He doesn’t just see and hear from a distance. Remember, he is the God who came and walked among us.

When Jesus came to earth, he took on humanity and saw and heard and wept with us.

He went to the cross and was broken for us.

That same God is the God who sees and knows and who is absolutely worth waiting for.

If there’s sin in your life that God has convicted you about, use this period of waiting to get rid of it. If you’ve never trusted him, learn from Abraham and Sarah and their mistakes and trust in the God who is faithful.

Keep waiting, keep praying, keep seeking his face, keep doing the last thing he told you to do until he tells you to do something different.

Don’t let your weariness in waiting cause you to get ahead, get out, or give in.

Let’s pray...