The Gospel of Hagar

Last week we looked a little bit at Abraham and Sarah - exploring the promise God made to Abraham that

“I will bless you… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2–3)

One of the challenges of trying to preach through the entire arc of scripture in 24 weeks is the sheer enormity of the task. Today, on our second sermon looking at ‘the seed of promise’ from The God Story book I flicked through the remaining 38 chapters of Genesis to see what God was going to highlight for me. There’s so much - the big ones of Jacob and Esau (which I spent four weeks preaching on a few years back), Joseph - which Rebecca did a deep dive into - and so many other characters and twists and turns. But there is one person that I felt God was calling me to explore - Hagar. A person I’ve always felt a bit of sympathy for but never really paid too much attention to - but now I’m utterly captivated by her.

Our story starts 10 years before Hagar is first mentioned - God has promised Abraham that he will bear a son - and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Ten years on from this promise we find that Abraham and Sarah have still not had a child, and so they decide to engineer for themselves the fulfilment of God’s will in their lives. Let’s listen to our scripture reading now.

Genesis 16:1–16 NRSV

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” But Abram said to Sarai, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.

It’s a grim old story, and I think that’s why I’ve always glossed over it - because it’s just too uncomfortable to dwell on. Big mistake, Richard.

I’m not going to dig into the first part of this story - while it is important and gives us the context of what follows - it’s not where we’ll find our gold today.

One thing to note - it’s interesting to note that after Hagar flees from Sarai because of the way she’s treating her, we meet the ‘angel of the Lord’ - but as the story progresses Hagar identifies this person as ‘the Lord’ - or more precisely, YHWH. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll be referring to this person as God, rather than fluffing around with my language too much.

Let’s have a look at some of the remarkable things about Hagar - because she racks up a significant number of first place medals….

She is the first person in scripture where it explicitly says that God found her

She is the first person in scripture to encounter the ‘angel of the Lord’

She is the first woman that God calls by name

She is the first woman to receive a prophetic word about her unborn child - some have described this as an annunciation

She is the first person that God tells what to call her child

She is the first person to give God a name - El Roi - a surprisingly tricky one to translate, but most likely means ‘the God who sees me’

She is the first person to name a place after an encounter with God.

Hagar is a pregnant Egyptian slave, who is in all honesty only a side character in the story because of the way Sarah and Abraham tried to take control of the promises of God. She’s an outsider, she’s faced persecution, and now she’s on the run in the wilderness - but God finds her, sees her, and makes promises to her. That is huge.

We see this time and time again in scripture - God seeking out the hurt, the vulnerable, the last, the lost, and the least - and rejoicing, just like in the parable of the lost sheep: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Let’s have a quick look at the prophetic word God gives to Hagar:

I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.

Sound familiar? It’s so close to what God promised Abraham - that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. You could take this as being a repeat of the promise to Hagar now that Abram has taken her as his wife - but my gut feeling, possibly because of how the story unfolds, is that this is a separate promise to Hagar. This isn’t to be the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham.

Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.

The name Ishmael means “God has heard”. Names are so often important in scripture - the name Hagar can mean “the displaced one”, or “the sojourner” or “the resident alien”.

God tells Hagar that her son will be:

a wild ass of a man

Just to be really clear - this isn’t an insult. The wild ass or donkey lived a solitary existence in the desert away from society - God is saying that Ishmael will be free-roaming, strong, and enjoy the freedom his mother sought but never had.

So with these promises, Hagar heads back to Sarah and Abraham.

As we fast forward through time we see Abraham seeming to love Ishmael - calling him ‘my son’ and asking God to keep him in his favour. But we also have the promise again that Sarah will bear a son - and that it will be this child, not Ishmael, that continues the covenental promise. It’s fourteen long years after Ishmael is born before Sarah gives birth to Isaac.

Three years or so later, we catch up with Ishmael again.

Genesis 21:9-10 (Robert Alter translation0

The Hebrew Bible CHAPTER 21

And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, laughing. And she said to Abraham, “Drive out this slavegirl and her son, for the slavegirl’s son shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac.”

Pop quiz. Can anyone remember what the name ‘Isaac’ meant? Laughter. That’s worth noting - because the word ‘laughing’ used here is related to the name Isaac. It may well be that Sarah couldn’t bear to see Ishmael happy and playing, but there’s a theory, which I subscribe to, that what we see here is Ishmael ‘Isaacing’ - that is Sarah seeing Ishmael playing the role of Isaac, presuming to be the legitimate heir.

Either way, Sarah is incensed, and after some back and forward between her and Abraham and Abraham and God, Abraham ends up sending Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness, with only a loaf of bread and a skin of water - no where near enough to survive on for more than a few days.

Genesis 21:15–17 MSG

When the water was gone, she left the child under a shrub and went off, fifty yards or so. She said, “I can’t watch my son die.” As she sat, she broke into sobs. Meanwhile, God heard the boy crying.

It’s worth noting that we’ve been told that Hagar is crying, yet God hears Ishmael crying. Ishmael, whose name means “God has heard”

Genesis 21:17–19 MSG

The angel of God called from Heaven to Hagar, “What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy and knows the fix he’s in. Up now; go get the boy. Hold him tight. I’m going to make of him a great nation.” Just then God opened her eyes. She looked. She saw a well of water. She went to it and filled her canteen and gave the boy a long, cool drink.

In this moment Hagar earns another gold medal - she becomes the first person in scripture that God ‘opens the eyes’ of. She had given up, but God opened her eyes to see the well just in front of her.

This is our God. The God who will not give up on us - who will seek us, name us, love us - the God who will leave the 99 in search of the one.

Genesis 21:20–21 MSG

God was on the boy’s side as he grew up. He lived out in the desert and became a skilled archer. He lived in the Paran wilderness. And his mother got him a wife from Egypt.

And what became of Ishmael? Well, God promised to Abraham back in Genesis 17:20 “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.”

This comes to pass, and Ishmael fathers 12 sons who become the original ancestors of the Ishmaelites. There’s all sorts of parallels and symbolism here with the 12 tribes of Israel. But the first time we meet the Ishmaelites as a group in scripture is in the story of Joseph - they’re the people Joseph’s brothers sell him to as a slave.

But that’s a wormhole I’m not going to dive into, because I want our focus to remain on Hagar. The story of Hagar smells an awful lot like Jesus. It’s the story of the Gospel.

If Hagar gives us a glimpse of the God who sees, names, and provides — then Jesus is the full revelation of that God.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” When Hagar met “the angel of the Lord” and named him El-Roi, “the God who sees me,” it was the first recorded instance of a human grasping this profound truth: God sees me. And in Jesus, we see that truth walking in flesh and blood.

Jesus is the one who stops for the bleeding woman in the crowd… who calls Zacchaeus down from the tree… who restores the outcast… who meets the woman at the well with dignity and prophetic truth… who welcomes children… who forgives his enemies even from the cross.

Jesus doesn’t just see you - he comes for you. He meets you in the wilderness. He provides living water when all hope is gone.

The same God who opened Hagar’s eyes to the well in the desert says in John 7: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.” He is the well that never runs dry.

So if you, like Hagar, find yourself in the wilderness - abandoned, hurting, at the end of your rope - hear this today:

Jesus sees you.

Jesus hears your cry.

Jesus knows your name.

Jesus meets you with grace.

Jesus gives you living water.

Jesus will never leave you.

Amen.