The God Who Sees

Introduction

Do you guys know Mr. Bean?? For those of you who don’t know, it’s a really old comedy show from the UK, and when I was young we used to watch it all the time. We used to watch it at school a lot, especially when we got our vaccinations. We would all line up in the assembly hall, there would be all these scary nurses, they would give us the jab, some of us would be crying, and then we all go to a little area with lots of snacks and we watched Mr. Bean together to laugh it all off.

Let’s watch a little clip together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHeIa-bE-mw

Now we can see Mr. Bean being really impatient here. And that’s exactly what we see with Abraham today. Mr. Bean get’s really impatient, so he takes things into his own hands, he jumps ahead of this old woman down the stairs, but at the end of the day, the situation hasn’t gotten any better. And it’s the same with Abraham in today’s passage: he gets impatient with God’s promises, so he and Sarah take things into his own hands, and they try to get the promises themselves, but things don’t work out as planned.

So let’s read through the passage and see what God teaches us through Genesis today.

Read Genesis 16.

1. We need to be patient

What is happening in today’s passage is that remember God promised Abraham 3 things: land, blessing, and lots of children. But what do we see in verse 1? Read Genesis 16:1 “1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.”

They had no children because Sarah was barren; she was too old to have children.

In chapter 15, we saw Abraham believed God despite the hopeless situation - read Genesis 15:6 “6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

But we see in verse 3 that 10 years had gone by. And after 10 years, the faith and trust that Abraham had starts to disappear. And as a result Abraham and Sarah flip-flops: they get impatient, they can no longer rely on God to fulfill these promises.

Look at what Sarah says in Genesis 16:2 “2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children...’ - Rather than believing in God, Sarah is actually now blaming God.

So they try to take things into their own hands, and get these promises for themselves.

How do they do this? Read Genesis 16:2–3 “2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.”

Back in the times of Abraham over 3000 years ago, if a couple couldn’t have children, it wasn’t an uncommon practice to have children through another woman called a concubine. And this is what is happening here: because Abraham and Sarah got impatient and couldn’t trust in God to fulfill his promises of many children, they try and get it themselves by Sarah giving her servant Hagar to Abraham as a concubine to have children.

But this completely backfires: yes, Hagar is able to have a child, but this results in great conflict between Hagar and Sarah, and then a lot of conflict between Abraham and Sarah as well, and eventually Hagar runs away. The family is breaking down.

What does this teach us? When faced with the difficult situation of having no children, and when faced with the delay in God’s promises being fulfilled, they got impatient. And because they got impatient, there was a temptation to no longer trust in God, but trust in something else. In this case, they chose to trust in their own wisdom and strength instead of God. They could no longer rely on God alone to fulfill his promises; they thought they would use their own strength and wisdom.

But human strength and wisdom never solves the problem. Just like Mr. Bean, we just end up in the same situation. Or just like Abraham, we end up in a worse situation.

So when we are faced with difficult situations in life - when the promsies of God’s love, comfort, and care don’t seem real or seem far away - we can get impatient. And when we are impatient there is a temptation to trust in ourselves or the things we have, instead of God

For example, you might be poor and struggling financially. Rather than working hard and trusting that God would supply your needs, you turn to gambling.

Or another example is you feel insecure, and don’t feel good about yourself. And rather than believing your worth and value is found in God, you try to find it in being popular, or being smart, or getting the approval of others.

2. Faithful action vs. Faithless shortcut

So we need to be patient and trust in God, even when we face difficulties, even in situations when the promises of God don’t seem real. Because if we are impatient, we wander and we trust in things outside of God, especially ourselves.

And when I say that we need to be patient and trust in God, I’m not saying that we do nothing and wait for God to do everything. The mistake that Abraham and Sarah made was not that they acted - but they tried to take a faithless shortcut. There’s a difference between a faithful action and a faithless shortcut.

An example of a faithful action here is Hagar. Hagar ran away and was crying in the wilderness. But God asked her to go back to Abraham, even though her life with Abraham and Sarah was hard. Even though it would be a tough life back with Abraham and Sarah, she believed and trusted in God and still went back - she acted faithfully, and she was blessed for her actions. This is Hagar being patient, trusting in God despite the difficult situation, and acting faithfully.

Abraham and Sarah on the other hand were impatient, didn’t trust in God, and tried to use their own wisdom by taking a faithless shortcut. That was their error: not their action itself, but because their action was faithless, an action out of impatience and fear. If Abraham and Sarah were patient, they would have taken a faithful action rather than a faithless shortcut, which for them, is to wait for God to fulfill his promises.

So we are to do the same: when faced with difficulties and challenges, we need to be patient, by trusting in God, which doesn’t mean doing nothing, but taking faithful actions rather than faithless shortcuts.

3. The God Who Sees

And lastly, this passage shows us why it is we can be patient and trust in God. And it is because our God is a God who sees.

Read Genesis 16:13–15 “13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. 15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.”

Hagar was crying and struggling by herself in her wilderness. She was desperate. But God came to her and helped her.

And Hagar calls God ‘a God of seeing’ in verse 13

In verse 14, we see a well, which is called Beer-Lahai-Roi, which means ‘the well of the living one who sees me’

And in verse 15, Hagar has a son and names him ‘Ishmael’, which means ‘God hears’.

And what does it mean that God sees us and hears us? It doesn’t mean that God just sees and hears from far, just watching us suffer. It means that God cares for us deeply. Just as God cared deeply for Hagar, took care of her, and blessed her, God is deeply involved in our lives, looking after us and taking care of us. It is so easy to think of God, far away in heaven, uninvolved in our lives. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. God is so deeply involved in our lives, that He lives in us.

Conclusion

And the fact that God cares was proven to us when God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us - what greater proof do we need that God cares for us?

This is why we can be patient in difficult situations

This is why we can trust in God when the situation seems impossible

This is why we can take faithful actions rather than faithless shortcuts, when the promises of God don’t seem real and God seems far away.

So when we face impossible situations, or when we feel that God’s promises don’t seem real, let’s remind ourselves of the story of Hagar, which shows us that no matter how things appear on the surface of our lives, God is deeply involved in our lives, he sees and hears us, and is always looking after us. This is why as Christians, we can always live with hope.