The God Who...

1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” 6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” 13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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It had been 10 years already. Ten long years. Abram and Sarai had been living in Canaan for 10 stinking years and still had no child. Abram and Sarai had no offspring even though the LORD had told them—promised them!—more offspring, more descendants than anyone could count.

“Oh yeah? I can count them. Zero! No children. None. Zilch. Nada.”

This is a thought that festers over the years. Sarai knows God’s promise, but time and grief cause her to think that the LORD has kept her from having children.

And, in keeping with that, Sarai comes up with a fix for this problem. She’s going to take matters into her own hands; obviously God isn’t going to come through, so it’s up to Sarai to figure it out.

I’m certain most of us have used a similar line of reasoning.

“Sarai is an interesting woman,” a friend commented to me after reading Genesis 16. “She gives her husband to another woman, or gives this other woman to her husband—I believe that’s adultery.”

That’s not the wrong assessment at all. Sarai gave her husband to her maidservant so her husband could sleep with her.

This was, however, a culturally-accepted practice.

In some nineteenth century B.C. Assyrian materials, there is a provision. If a wife did not produce children for her husband within two years, she herself could buy a slave woman. After that slave woman had given birth to a child, the husband could sell her off wherever he wished (K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 325).

I have to believe that Sarai knew her little plan was wrong, that it was displeasing to God, that it certainly wasn’t part of God’s plan for her and Abram.

If it was God’s plan, He would have told them to go this route.

Sarai knew this practice wasn’t God’s idea, but it was culturally-acceptable.

Elevating what’s culturally-acceptable over God’s Word and God’s Will isn’t just in vogue today; no, this is nothing new. In every age, in every culture, sinful men and women (like me and you) naturally gravitate toward what is culturally-acceptable.

God’s people must resist the temptation to give in to what is culturally-acceptable. In fact, in a world which is and has been ruled by another since the fall of Adam and Eve, if it’s acceptable to the culture, God’s Word will call it what it is: sin.

God’s people must be willing to call evil “evil” and to call sin “sin” regardless of who accepts, celebrates, or champions it.

God’s people must refrain from affirming anything contrary to God’s Word, culturally-acceptable or not.

What is acceptable in culture may be faithless in the purposes of God. That certainly seems to be the case here with Sarai.

The author of Genesis, the one writing down this story under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is making his point without explicitly saying, “This is wrong!”

He tells us twice (vv. 1, 3) that Sarai is the wife of Abram, as if we could forget. And then, in verse 3, refers to Abram as Sarai’s husband.

We know already know all of this, but this is the writer’s way of inserting some emotion and feeling into the story. We’re meant to feel the weight of this here.

The proper relationship of husband and wife is being trampled—trampled by the wife’s plan and the husband’s failure to lead his wife and say, “No, we’re not doing that.”

The solution thought up by Sarai and agreed to by Abram is sad, all the way around.

I started thinking about how this is a reversal of sorts of what Abram did to Sarai in Genesis 12.

Upon entering Egypt, scared little Abram handed his wife over to Pharaoh and she was taken into Pharaoh’s household.

Now Sarai gives her husband to another woman.

Sinners in need of a Savior.

Abram and Sarai had moments of incredible faith followed by moments of unbelievable faithlessness and sin.

Faith and trust…self-reliance and distrust…faith and trust. It’s a constant back-and-forth. It’s almost chapter by chapter: faithful Abram, scared Abram, faithful Abram, foolish Abram, faithful Abram, plain ol’ stupid Abram.

And here we find ourselves. Our mistakes and misadventures and misplaced faith might not rise to the level of Abram’s. Then again, they might. I don’t know the extent of your sinfulness…but I know you’ve sinned. And deeply.

We are, along with Abram and Sarai, sinners in need of a Savior.

It began in the garden with Adam and Eve. In fact, there’s an echo of Genesis 3 here in Genesis 16.

Look at verse 2 for a moment:

Genesis 16:2 NIV

2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

Abram agreed / listened to what Sarai said, listened to the voice of Sarai.

The only other place this phrasing occurs is in Genesis 3:17

Genesis 3:17 NIV

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

Here, Genesis 16, Sarai takes Hagar and gives her to her husband, Abram. Genesis 3: Eve takes the fruit of the tree and gives it to her husband, Adam.

There are shades of the original fall all over Genesis 16.

“Here again is the sad twistedness that blights and pervades all our relationships and circumstances. How often we realize that we have not really moved far way from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

- Dale Ralph Davis

Sinners in need of a Savior.

We are those who have broken God’s Law. A holy God with a holy standard will not be impressed with an unholy people.

True, we’re all made in His image, but we have all shunned His ways and His purposes in favor of our way and our plans/desires. We have broken and transgressed the law of God. In a word, we have sinned. We are sinners. I am a sinner. And so are you.

Sinners in need of a Savior.

The LORD—good and gracious, merciful and kind—has fixed what we have broken (even in our attempt to fix it, a la Sarai offering Hagar).

Have you ever made something worse by trying to fix it?

I pretty much know what I’m doing on a computer; I can fix most things (or so I think). What ends up happening about half the time is that I’ll spend a couple hours “fixing it” without quite fixing it. And I still end up taking it to Nevada.

Instead of attempting a “fix” myself, I should just drop it off with Shane Balk to begin with; he actually knows what he’s doing.

LORD knows we can’t fix our sin problem. And the wages of sin is death. Only God can fix this.

And so, Jesus, the only Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, offered Himself in our place. Jesus substituted and sacrificed Himself that we might be forgiven and made right with God.

The only proper response to our sin is repentance (this is what Jesus calls all sinners to do). Repent! Turn away from your sin and to run to Jesus, trusting Him in faith to save. Only He can!

What Abram and Sarai should have done was turn from their sinful scheming and turn to the LORD—to the One who made them, knows them, hears them, and sees them. That’s what they should have done, but they didn’t.

Abram does what Sarai, in essence, tells him to do. Hagar, Sarai’s slave girl, and Abram, Sarai’s husband, sleep together. And Hagar gets pregnant.

Hagar’s behavior toward Sarai, and probably Hagar’s mere presence and pregnancy, is enough for Sarai; she’s had it.

Sarai blames Abram and expects him to put Hagar firmly in her place. It’s Abram’s fault for not leading and Sarai’s fault for pushing. They’ve both made a mess of the situation by trying to fix the situation.

Abram makes it worse by letting Sarai treat Hagar however she pleases. Of course Hagar runs away. You’d run away, too.

In a beautiful turn of events, Hagar finds, even as she flees, that she’s the one who has been found.

Gen 16:7 “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.”

What a marvelous and merciful surprise for Hagar to be found by

The God Who Knows

Four times in verses 7-11, “the angel of the LORD” is mentioned. As verse 13 implies, He is the LORD YHWH Himself in some kind of visible form.

Many Christians, myself included, believe that “the angel of the LORD” is the preincarnate Christ—the eternal Son of God; it’s Jesus, long before that Bethlehem manger. The angel of the LORD speaks and His words are perceived as being God’s words.

This “angel of the LORD” finds Hagar, and of course, He knows her. He calls her by name: “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”

He knows her fully. He knows her name. Jaime Owens writes: “If Christ knows your name, it matters not who else does.”

He knows exactly who Hagar is, where she’s come from, and where she’s going.

He knows what Hagar has suffered.

He knows. And He cares.

Bruce Waltke points out that this is the only known instance in the literature of the ANE where the Triune God address a woman by name! And an Egyptian servant girl at that!

“The angel of the LORD” finds her and He calls her by name. Just imagine, after the initial shock, what comfort Hagar felt.

She was mistreated by Sarai, used by Sarai and Abram, and then discarded.

But the LORD God finds her and speaks to her; He knows her and cares about her and has further encouragement for her.

The God who knows—her and all things—knows that Hagar needs to do something she’s not going to want to do.

The angel of the LORD tells Hagar to go back to Sarai and submit to her. That’s everyone’s favorite word, “submit.”

Hagar is commanded by God to adjust her attitude toward Sarai; instead of despising her, she is to submit to her authority.

Let me clue you in: the LORD isn’t going to support all of your plans and ideas. If we’re following Him, we’ll realize there are many decisions we make that He’ll have to correct.

If you follow the God who knows all things (including everything about you), you have to be ready and willing to alter your course and follow His lead instead of your own.

Hagar learns that the One True God is the God who knows and that He is

The God Who Hears

The angel of the LORD promises to increase Hagar’s descendants and then goes on assuring her that God not only knows all about her, but that He has heard of her misery.

God knows very well that Hagar is pregnant. He instructs her to name her baby “Ishmael”—which means “God hears.”

Throughout the OT, the LORD hears the misery of His people as they’re in exile, as they suffer under ruthless leaders; He hears their cries when they’re enslaved. The people cry out to Him and He hears.

Hagar’s son will carry in his name this reminder for her, the reminder of deepest comfort: The LORD has listened to your affliction.

Every time she introduces him, “This is Ishmael,” or yells for him to come inside for dinner, “Ishmael!” it’ll be a reminder of the God who hears, the God who heard her.

The good God of heaven hears us. He hears this lowly, foreign slave girl named Hagar, used and mistreated and discarded.

He hears the unspoken longings of the oppressed and the neglected, the cries of the widow and the orphan.

He is the God who hears. You don’t even have to speak it or verbalize it; He hears.

He knows your innermost being. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He knows every hair on your head (Let’s skip the balding pastor jokes, okay? 2 Kings 2:23-24).

He hears the worry and fear in your voice. He hears the doubt underneath the facade of confidence, and the struggle beneath the feigned certainty. He hears the prayer quietly uttered in the still of the night.

He is the God who hears, and

The God Who Sees

Hagar has had quite the interaction with the angel of the LORD. She’s utterly convinced that the “angel” is the LORD Himself. She gives the LORD a name, something no other person (male or female) in the OT does. She calls the LORD—El Ro’i, the God who sees.

“The God who sees.”

The LORD has seen Hagar as more than someone to be used, as more than an object, as more than a pawn to be played.

The LORD saw her need and appeared to her. He saw her, and Hagar saw something of the LORD, the One who sees her.

There was a well located between two cities—an actual geographic location named “Beer Lahai Roi”—the well of the Living One who sees me—after this divine encounter.

This is significant, a place to mark this moment in Hagar’s life. That the LORD, the Living One, would seek her out, would see her…in that day, women were viewed as little more than property. A slave girl would certainly be viewed as a possession, and an expendable one at that.

Abram and Sarai cast her off. No one else seemed to care about her.

But the LORD sees her.

Like when Jesus saw the two blind men on the side of the road hoping for a miracle…

Like when Jesus saw the leper and the paralytic and the demoniac and the woman at the well…

The LORD sees. He stoops down to us, condescending to our level. He saw our deep predicament, and so took on flesh and made His dwelling among us.

Jesus saw us in our lowly state and came to rescue us.

Listen to author and poet, K.J. Ramsey. She reminds us:

“When we see we have a Good Shepherd, we don’t have to shove our way to significance. In Jesus’ flock, you don’t have to be shiny to be seen; He seeks out the struggling, not the strong. This is a flock where you do not have to fight to be found.”

He sees us. He hears us. He knows us. Even us.

Genesis 16 is a unique interaction between the LORD and Hagar, but where Hagar benefits, we, too benefit.

This is an unique interaction, but it’s not an isolated occurence; the LORD sees us—perfectly, completely, every part of us.

There are several instances of this in the Bible; this might be my favorite instance in the NT:

Luke 19:1–10 NIV

1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. 5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. 7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

It’s the LORD who seeks us. He sees us and knows us. It’s the LORD who saves us.

HE has come to seek and save that which is lost.

In our sinfulness and faithLESSness, we meet the LORD who is gracious and merciful, the One who seeks us and finds us, the One who rescues and saves.

Along with Hagar, we who are in Christ can rejoice and say of Him:

“He is the God who sees me, the God who hears me, the God who knows me.”

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