Genesis 16

0:00 Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you, you. Every single day, every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you.

0:39 Oh, can't you see? You belong to me. So every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you. That's creepy. i mean that's just a creepy song now i know some of you are probably under the impression especially if you're young that that's a love song it's not uh it was 1980s and sting wrote it and sting didn't mean it to be a love song that would be extremely creepy what he meant was that this person that's writing the song and singing the song has broken up with somebody and he's obsessed with getting her back he can't sleep at night without seeing her face he's obsessed and the reason it's so creepy to us when we hear that everything you do I'm going to be watching you is that we don't like to be watched. Nobody likes to be watched and there's no generation of human beings who has ever been more watched or at least felt more watched than ours. We feel like we're

1:42 being watched and it's probably true we probably don't even know the extent to which we're being watched with every move we make. It freaks us out when we have a conversation with somebody in a Immediately, our phone starts giving us ads that seem keyed exactly to that conversation. You're being listened to. I read a story just the other day that in China, there are certain factories that have installed AI cameras at the factory doors. So that if a factory worker shows up and looks unhappy in some way, the door locks and they're not allowed to come in until they smile.

2:20 It said that there are other AI systems in Chinese schools that can identify for a teacher when a child is giving off vibes that they've lost interest in the lesson or they've gotten bored or they've fallen asleep. You're being watched. And we don't like that. We do, however, like to be seen. And being seen is a very different thing, isn't it, than being watched. Being watched communicates that you're a problem, and you may become a worse problem, and there's somebody in authority who wants to keep you from becoming a problem.

2:55 To be seen, though, is to be noticed. To have somebody acknowledge your existence, maybe even care about your existence. One author put it like this, it doesn't take much to come into your own. All it takes is someone's gaze. It's not accurate to say that I just felt seen. It was more than that. Beheld by her, whoever it was in the story, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.

3:28 It made me somebody. It made me feel like someone I was noticed, I was cared for, I was seen. In our story today in Genesis chapter 16, there is someone else who had never been seen or cared for or really noticed in her entire life until things went to absolute chaos. And then finally, there was one person in all the universe who finally saw her. We're looking at that story in Genesis chapter 16, continuing our study of the book of Genesis. Let me invite you to take a Bible, turn over to the 16th chapter of Genesis.

3:59 If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles like the one I've got here, you can find it on page 11. So it's right near the beginning of the Bible. If you're not familiar with it, if you turn to page 10 and 11 in those Bibles, You'll see big numbers there, 14, 15, 16, 17. We Christians call those chapters. It's just a way to divide the Bible up so that we can kind of find each other as we're talking about it. And then if you'll look down into, say, chapter 16, you'll see some smaller numbers, kind of superscripted. Some of those are footnotes. Don't worry about those. But you'll see more of them that are what we call verse numbers.

4:31 So those are the verses of this particular chapter. We're going to be the whole time today in Genesis chapter 16. So if I say something like look down at verse 3 or verses 3 and 4, you'll know to look inside 16, find the little 3 and the 4, and you'll be able to follow along. We've been looking at Genesis, specifically the life of Abraham for the past two weeks. Abraham was this random pagan that God plucked out of the region of Babylon a long, long way away from the Promised Land, brought him across the desert to the Promised Land, and then once he arrived there, made him some spectacular promises.

5:04 Now, so far since chapter 12, when God made those promises, his life, Abraham's life, has been one of massive ups and downs in relation to those promises. So you've got a few places in the story where he's faithfully believed God's promises and he's acted on that belief, that trust, that reliance on God to keep his promises. You got a few more places, though, where Abraham has just catastrophically forgotten those promises and even seems to have put them in grave, grave danger.

5:36 Well, today, lucky you, we have come to one of the great low points of Abraham's life. It's a moment where his faith just entirely fails, it seems. He takes matters into his own hands to try to force the promise to completion, and the result is chaos and disaster. And to make matters worse, it was just last week in chapter 15 that we saw God taking this huge step of taking his promises and turning them into a unilateral covenant with Abraham.

6:06 Essentially locking in the promises in a formal way to give Abraham offspring and land and ultimately to bless the whole world. So it's striking that this lowest of lows, this failure of faith on Abraham's part comes literally right on the heels of one of the highest moments of his life and the highest moments of God's dealing. with him. It's an incredible story. And as we read it, I want you to ask a couple of questions. So keep these questions in mind. Ask them to yourself as we're reading this text. What is the result of God's people acting in unbelief? What happens when God's people act in unbelief? And then what is God's response to that unbelief? What is God's response to that unbelief? Ask yourself those questions as we read. Genesis chapter 16, starting in verse 1. Now Sarah, Abram's wife, Sarai there is just kind of another spelling, another name for Sarah, and Abram there is another name for Abraham. They're both going to get their names changed later in the story. So don't get confused when I refer to Sarah and Abraham. That's Sarai and Abram, okay? Same people, it just sticks

7:12 in my head, and I'm not going to try to say Sarai every time I say it, okay? Now, Sarah, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar, and Sarah said to Abram, behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram listens to the voice of Sarah. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. And he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarah said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant 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 Sarah, behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please. And Sarah dealt harshly with her, and she fled 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, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you

8:14 going? She said, I'm fleeing from my mistress, Sarah. 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 surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her.

8:47 You are a God of seeing. For she said, truly, hear, I have seen him who looks after me. And therefore the well was called Bir Lahai Roy. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son. And Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. All right, so did you ask those questions of yourself as we were reading that? What's the result when God's people act in unbelief?

9:20 And what is God's response then to that unbelief? Well, I think the answers to those questions are pretty straightforward. The result of unbelief and God's people acting in unbelief is absolute and total chaos. That's the result. That's what we see here is Abraham and Sarah try to take the fulfillment of God's promises into their own hands. Their entire household falls into total chaos. Sarah's abusing her servant. Hagar runs off into the wilderness. And even Abraham is just completely passive in the whole thing. And he's abdicating all responsibility to lead his family and his home.

9:54 But the one thing that never changes in all this, the one thing that remains steady as a rock in the middle of the whole storm is God's response. And that's his determination to keep his promise and even his love for the afflicted. So even here, in the wake of this total disaster, his determination to give Abraham a legitimate heir never wavers. Even as he shows great compassion also to Hagar.

10:25 So that's the great lesson. That's the main idea of this text. Unbelief leads to chaos. Unbelief leads to chaos. But the God who sees never turns his face away. Unbelief leads to chaos. But the God who sees, that's what Hagar calls him, never turns his face away. Now, structurally, I think you can see the two sort of parts or movements of this narrative very easily. There's Abraham and Sarah's sin and the story of that and its results in verses 1 to 6.

10:57 And then you've got Hagar's flight into the wilderness and her encounter with God, the angel of the Lord, in 7 through 14. So those two sections are how it breaks down. There are, therefore, two points to the sermon, each one looking at one of those sections. So number one, looking at verses 1 to 6, Abraham's faithless shortcut. And number two, looking at 7 through 14, just the rest of it, God's gracious pursuit. Abraham's faithless shortcut and God's gracious pursuit. That's where we're going. So point number one, first looking at verses 1 through 6, Abraham's faithless shortcut.

11:33 Last week in chapter 5, we saw this just extraordinary moment when God's promise to Abraham to give him land, to give him descendants, to bless the world through him. And that promise became more than a promise. Remember that? God turned it into a formal covenant. He walked alone, unilaterally, through the cut pieces of the sacrificial animals, this bloody pathway. And basically said, if I fail to keep this promise, then may I, the God of the universe, be cut apart, ripped and torn to shreds, just like these animals have been.

12:04 You think, well, that can't happen to the God of the universe. And the point is, right, yes, no, it can't. And no more can that happen than God can fail to keep his promises. So it's a unilateral, unbreakable, unbroken covenant that God makes with Abraham. And those promises are formalized into a covenant. That's one of the high points of the entire story of Genesis. So it's incredible that the very next thing that happens is here in chapter 16. When Abraham and Sarah completely lose faith in that covenant and decide to take matters into their own hands.

12:40 and it wasn't long. We don't know exactly how long it was, but it couldn't have been very long between chapter 15 and chapter 16, and yet it happened so quickly. It's not a complicated story. The whole thing is really told in just three and a half verses. I mean, to put it straightforwardly, Sarah basically decides that she's tired of waiting on God to give her and Abraham a baby, so she hatches a plot. Well, it turns out that she's got this Egyptian servant who is apparently obviously of childbearing age, and so she proposes to Abraham a plan. Abraham, you should take my servant Hagar here as a wife, another second wife, and maybe God will give us a child through her.

13:24 Now, you hear that plot, and I hear that plot, and it sounds just immediately wrong to us, doesn't it? I mean, just right off the bat, it's just like, you can't do that, right? That's not going to work, Sarah. We know that. But in Abraham's day, it might not have been quite as crazy as it sounds. I mean, for one thing, surrogacy, in the case of infertility, was a pretty common thing in the ancient Near East.

13:55 So Abraham and Sarah would have been surrounded by people, especially the elites, the high people. They would have been doing this all the time. And if you look at three, it's actually been 10 years since God had promised to give Abraham a son. The promise had been made 10 years prior. We don't know when it was turned into a covenant. But the promise has been sitting there for 10 years. And really all God has done is walk through the animals. He hasn't actually kept the promise yet. When he got the promises, he was 75. Now he's 85. So he's been waiting a really long time.

14:27 And as far as he knows, at 75, now 85 years old, his ability to father children is getting weaker and weaker every day that passes. So you can kind of see where Sarah's coming from. Maybe, she thinks, God intends, maybe his whole plan all along is for us to take advantage of this idea of surrogacy in order to push the promises forward. Maybe the reason it hasn't happened is because we're not doing enough to make it happen. And it's tempting to think that, right?

14:58 It's tempting to sympathize. But that's just not how the Bible looks at this episode. It's just not how the Bible looks at it. In fact, if you read it carefully and kind of notice the words in it, you can see that the author, Moses, in writing it, deliberately colors this story with the words that he uses to look like the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. It is just packed with words from Genesis 3. So, for example, look at verse 3. After Abraham had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abraham, her husband's wife.

15:36 What are the main verbs in that verse? Sarah took Hagar and gave her to her husband. Took and gave. It's the exact same words that are used of Eve taking the forbidden fruit and giving it to her husband. Also, look at the end of verse 2. Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. Where do you remember that from? Genesis chapter 3 in the curses. Because you have done this, God told Adam, because you listened to the voice of your wife, therefore you are cursed. So you see what Moses is doing there, right? He's in a subtle kind of way, if you're paying attention as a careful reader, he's taking away any doubt that Sarah was doing the right thing here. He's saying, Sarah, you are sinning in exactly the same way that Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. This is wrong.

16:38 It's a really striking connection, isn't it? And I think it's worth pausing to talk about it for just a minute. So in two cases now, Adam and Eve, and now Abraham and Sarah, just in, and think, I mean, we've been in this for a lot of weeks, but we're literally in the first 16 chapters of the entire Bible. There's like, what, 1,500 chapters coming? I don't know exactly, but it's a lot. We're in the first 16, and in just the very beginning of the Bible, a family has now twice been led into sin by the wife.

17:10 Now, why do you think, at the very beginning of it all, why do you think Genesis is emphasizing that so much? Well, it's not entirely clear why it's doing. It's obvious that it is emphasizing it. But I think it might have something to do with the fact that it's a little bit unexpected. Right? I mean, when I point that out to you, that this has happened twice now, you know, there's some little murmurs out there. Whoa, yeah, yeah, I noticed that. Why does God seem to be harping on that so much?

17:42 Well, I think it's partly because it's a little bit unexpected. And therefore, it's something that we as human beings tend not to have our guard up about. But I think in that pattern and in this story, there are lessons here for both men and women. So women, for you, the lesson here, I think, is that even though you aren't the head of your household, Your capacity to do both good and evil in your home and in your family, your capacity to lead your family into sin and chaos or to obedience and blessing is gigantic.

18:18 And you should be careful. You should be careful. Adam's family and Abraham's family were both thrown into chaos when their wives lost faith in God and decided it would be better for them and their family If they disobeyed, and sisters, the same thing can so easily happen in your family as well. Don't take that lightly. No, you're not the head of the household, but don't take it lightly. Don't think for a minute that you are free of responsibility in your home.

18:54 Men, there's a lesson for you, too, here. And that lesson is one that many men need to learn. And it is, your wife is not always right. And I do not mean that to be funny. Your wife is not always right. And your highest responsibility in your family life is not necessarily to make her happy. It is to obey God. Your highest responsibility in your family life is not necessarily to make her happy.

19:30 It's to obey God. Now, you know, I know that that goes against centuries of pop wisdom and conventional wisdom. Happy wife, happy life. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy and all that. But the fact is, your responsibility before God, the highest one that you have, is to obey God. To lead your family to obey God. And there are going to be times in your life when that will mean telling even your wife, brothers, no, we're not going to do that. And the thing is, we all know that does take a certain amount of courage.

20:03 It takes a willingness in a husband to allow some time of unhappiness and even conflict in your home. But it's exactly what both Adam and Abraham should have done in these circumstances. They should have said no. And the result would have been entirely different. Brothers, that's your responsibility to lead your family in obedience to God. Even when it requires saying no sometimes to the voice of your wife. And the thing is, ultimately, over time, your wife will praise and respect you for that.

20:34 Maybe not immediately, but hopefully over time that will happen. And even if she doesn't, it's God that you answer to anyway. Lead your family, lead your wife well in the fear of the Lord. Well, that's not what Abraham does. He listens to Sarah, accepts her unbelieving plot, and gets Hagar pregnant. What happens next in four to six is just a rapid descent into chaos. The whole sort of household just comes apart.

21:05 Nobody comes off looking good in this story. Abraham doesn't come off looking good. Sarah doesn't come off looking good. Even Hagar does not come off looking good at this portion of the story. In fact, I think you see in these verses a kind of just gross volcanic eruption of sin and its effects. and I want you to see three things in those verses 4 to 6. One thing, one lesson in each one of those verses, 4, 5, and 6. So here we go. First of all, in verse 4, look at what we see there in Hagar indulging in false pride.

21:37 She indulges right there in false pride. You see what it says? She looked with contempt on her mistress. In other words, she got pregnant in the natural course of things and decided that that somehow made her better than Sarah. And one way or another, she let that be known. And the text doesn't exactly say how she let it be known. Maybe she said something. Maybe it was just some little aside. Maybe it was just a haughty air. But some way, somehow, she started in an obvious way to begin to look down on Sarah, to dishonor her.

22:08 That's what the word is, to hold her in contempt. It's the word for dishonor. Now, importantly, that's the same word that's used in chapter 12, verse 3, where God says that anyone who dishonors Abraham and his family, he'll curse. So by dishonoring Abraham's wife, Hagar's actually putting herself in grave, grave danger. But it's worth noticing, too, that she just didn't have any reason to look down on Sarah. She didn't have any reason to dishonor her in the first place, did she?

22:41 I mean, what exactly had Hagar done to make her body have the ability to get pregnant? Nothing. And what had Sarah done to make her body unable to do so? Nothing. There was absolutely no reason for Hagar to look with prideful eyes down on Sarah. Her pride was utterly and completely misplaced. Friends, be careful that you don't get prideful about things that you had nothing to do with.

23:15 Be careful that you don't get prideful about things that you had nothing to do with. Now, I don't mean to say you can get prideful about other stuff, right? Ultimately, everything came from God, even if you, you know, built the company or, you know, whatever it is. It's not smart to get prideful about anything. But it is like a whole other level of dumb to get prideful about things God just gave you. I mean, how silly is it to have pride in your long flowing locks, right? Or your beautiful eyes. You didn't make those eyes.

23:47 You came out of the womb with them. God gave you those things. Don't be prideful about stuff God just did for you. That was Hagar's sin. It was false pride. Now look at verse 4, or 5, sorry. Look at 5. Because what we see there is Sarah engaging in false blame. If Hagar was guilty of false pride, Sarah there is engaged in false blame. Sarah said to Abraham, may the wrong done to me be on you.

24:18 What? I gave my servant to your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. So may the Lord judge between you and me, Abraham. What? What is she talking about? I mean, it's just a mess. Everything she's saying here is just a mess. She admits that it was her idea in the first place. But somehow she still blames the whole thing on Abraham and calls on God to give her justice in the matter over Abraham. I mean, essentially, you see what she's doing, right?

24:49 She's doing exactly what Adam did in the garden. It wasn't me. It was her fault. The woman that you gave to me did it. In this case, the man that you gave to me, oh God, did this to me. Judge him. Wrapping it in religious language, too. May God judge between us. We all have a tendency to do that, don't we? We have a tendency when we see our sin, when we finally recognize our sin as sin, our first impulse is to treat it like a hot potato and foist it off onto somebody else.

25:22 Well, it wasn't me. It was your fault. Yes, I did it. I admit that I did it. But you did that. And I only had to do what I did because you did that first. It's a tale as old as the Garden of Eden. So what should Sarah have done here? Well, I think it's pretty easy. She should have owned her sin. She should have admitted it. She should have not tried to blame someone or everyone else. And the result would have been entirely different. She wouldn't have taken it out on Hagar. Her heart would have been humble. Hagar wouldn't have fled.

25:52 Maybe Ishmael, Hagar's son, wouldn't have grown up in conflict for centuries with Abraham's family. I mean, we can't know that for sure. That's a lot of, you know, maybes. Ultimately, that result is up to God. But the point is that false blame is never the right result or response to sin. You have to own what's yours. So, friends, ask yourself even now, are you still taking some sin of yours and blaming it on somebody else? And don't try to get out of it by saying, yeah, but I admitted it.

26:25 I admitted it. I'm just a noticer. I'm just noticing that I did that because she did that. No, friend, you need to cut that off. What happened is that somebody else may have sinned. That's fine. But when you saw it or when it happened to you, you had a choice about whether to sin or not sin. And you chose to sin. That's the end of the ballgame. Admit what you did. Admit your sin. Own it. Take it to the Lord and find forgiveness. But stop blaming other people for it. Look at verse 6.

26:59 Third eruption of sin here. We see Abraham falling into false neutrality. Abraham falls into false neutrality. Verse 6, Abraham said to Sarah, behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please. Now at this point, Abraham's just trying to minimize the fallout of this. He's got his wife and her servant, his servant. He's got them fighting with one another. And he's just trying to stay out of it as much as he can. He doesn't want to have anything to do with this fight.

27:31 So he pretends to have no responsibility in the matter. You know what? You just go do whatever you think is good. She's your servant. She's in your power. She's in your hand. Just do what you, Sarah, think is good. But the reality is that Abraham did have responsibility here. He really did over both Sarah, his wife, and Hagar, her servant. He had a responsibility to make sure Sarah wasn't mistreating her servant, who was ultimately his servant, right? Her job description may have been serve the wife. But she was actually in the employ of Abraham.

28:05 And he had a responsibility to protect her. But he defaulted on both in a foolish attempt to stay neutral. To stay out of it. That is a constant temptation for men in the home. To stay out of it. To stay neutral. If you remember from the sermons last year in Genesis chapter 3, we learned that one of, there are two of them, One of the paradigmatic sins of men in particular from Genesis 3 is that we are forever going to be tempted to abdicate our leadership in the home.

28:43 And the fact is, that's often the easiest road. Abdication is the easiest road precisely because the paradigmatic sin of women is to then fill the leadership vacuum that's created by our abdication. Men sinfully step back from their God-given role to lead, and women sinfully step up to fill that void. And the result in the home, in the church, whatever it is, is chaos and disorder. Men, God made you to lead.

29:20 He made you to lead. So do that. Lead your family. Lead your family physically. Lead your family mentally. Lead your family spiritually. There's a joke in America that most families are taken to church by the mom and the dad's just being drug around by the nose. Don't let that be the case here at Third Avenue. Men, step up and lead. Take your family to church. Take your family to church. Be the one that wakes them up.

29:50 Be the one that has donuts on the table. Be the one that makes your wife coffee. Get everybody up and come to church. You be the one sitting on the edge of your seat in the sermon, listening, so that your wife and your children see an example of what it is to submit to the Word of God. You know what else? Men, you should be the loudest singer in your family. I kid you not. You should be the loudest singer in your family.

30:21 You have the loudest voice. There's no doubt about it. You just do. And you ought to use that voice for the glory of God. I mean, why is it? Why is there this sort of stigma on singing in the church as something that, well, the women and children do that, and I just sit here like this. I'm just here for the sermon. Why is there that? I mean, I know you guys go to football games. I've been to the Louisville Cardinals football games. I've walked under the tunnel, and it's always the men going, what's he? Hey.

30:52 We don't exactly have a fight song, but if you go to other schools, It's the men singing those fight songs, right? It's not the women, it's the men. You know why they're singing? Because that's something they would bleed for. It's something that they would lay their lives down for. Now, that's a little bit silly, but it's probably true. You sing about the things that you would lay your life down for. You sing about the things you would bleed for. And brothers, what is that other than Jesus Christ?

31:28 Sing, sing your heart out. False pride, false blame, false neutrality. Those are the sins that'll just rip families and even churches apart. So that's the question. Do you see any of those in yourself? And they're great things to look for. And when you find them, they're good things to attack and root out before they do even more damage. So Abraham's faithless shortcut led to disaster. But still, God never wavered. And that's the second point.

31:59 God's gracious pursuit. God's gracious pursuit. So starting in verse 7, the camera shifts away from Abraham's household, follows this servant Hagar who flees into the wilderness after her mistress Sarah starts to mistreat her or afflict her. The note there in verse 7 that she was on her way to Shur, do you see that? The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness. spring on the way to Shur. What that means is that she's gone south from Abraham's household. She's headed home to Egypt. Verse 1 tells us that she's an Egyptian, and now because her family's mistreating her, she's headed back home to Egypt. Now, why do I tell you that? It's not just an interesting little tidbit, right? It's important. How did Abraham get an Egyptian servant?

32:47 Well, if you remember back in the second part of chapter 12, the Egyptian pharaoh gave Abraham a bunch of gifts sort of to get rid of him in the wake of his lies about Sarah. He's like, oh my gosh, she's your wife, not your sister. Why are you bringing this judgment on me? Because I was about to marry her. So here, just take all this stuff and get out of here. Like you're banished, but I want you to go happy. Right? So that's what he does. And you remember what he gives him? the gifts, sheep, oxen, donkeys, male servants, and female servants. Now, we can't know for sure, but I think it's likely that we're supposed to remember that because she's mentioned as an Egyptian like three or four times in this story. We're supposed to remember that and understand that Hagar was one of those female servants given to Abraham by the Pharaoh. So what's the point?

33:35 I mean, why is that important? Well, the point is that the ironic result of Abraham's sin in Egypt, His sin and all the stuff that came after it created in the future even more opportunity to sin in the future. One sin and its fallout created even more opportunity to sin in the future. Sin is like that. It's spiritual kudzu. It just grows and grows and grows. It takes over one thing after another. It operates, for you financial people, on compound interest.

34:09 So better to repent and get it out of your life quickly than to let it grow into something that is entirely unmanageable. Well, at that point, on the way back home to Egypt, Hagar is met on the road by the angel of the Lord. Now, before we get into the details of the conversation, let's stop and talk about this angel of the Lord. This is the first time in the Old Testament that he shows up. There are like 48 times in the Bible that the angel of the Lord is mentioned. This is the first one. And he's a character that really has intrigued people for, well, centuries and millennia.

34:45 What's so intriguing about him is that he seems to kind of have two different roles or two different sort of characters about him. Most of the time, the angel of the Lord, it really just means messenger of the Lord, just seems to be God. He just seems to be a kind of visible manifestation of God. So he speaks in the first person as God, like he does here in verse 10. If you look down there, you see that? I will. The angel of the Lord comes, and he says, I will do this.

35:15 Well, who's actually doing it? It's God, right? Not some second party or third party, right? So he speaks in the first person, like verse 10. He even at certain times receives worship as God and is identified by other people, even angels, as God. So he just seems to be a physical, visible manifestation of God. but there are other places in the Bible where he seems distinct from God. So the angel of the Lord prays to God. He appeals to God. He is sent by God.

35:47 So what's going on there? Well, you might say that at various points in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord was with God, and the angel of the Lord was God. Now that's interesting, isn't it? John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So, that's why Christians have suggested for 2,000 years that the angel of the Lord is a kind of pre-incarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity.

36:24 You wouldn't refer to him as Jesus. Jesus, you know, the second person of the Trinity doesn't, the Son of God doesn't get the name Jesus until he's born. So you wouldn't refer to him as Jesus, but Christians have said this is a pre-incarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God. Now, you know, if you ask me, I don't know if there's quite enough evidence to nail that down entirely, but I do think it's an intriguing thought that is worth handing to you. At any rate, this angel of the Lord, who, whatever else he might be, is just clearly God himself, meets hagar on the road speaks to her tells her he's going to bless her give her a son uh and then and then hagar in in in great happiness and great joy after all this is done she names the place after the lord who sees her and the story goes on now a few things to notice here three of them in fact three things that i want you to notice in this in this second half of the story. First, I want you to notice that God confronts Hagar before he comforts her.

37:28 God confronts Hagar before he comforts her. Do you see that? And the first thing that he says to her there in verse 8 is, Hagar, look what he calls her, servant of Sarah. You thought you were out of here. Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? It's the same kind of question that he asked Adam and Eve, if you remember back in Genesis 3 after they sinned. Where are you?

38:01 It's a question that's aimed at getting her to see where she's gone wrong. Sarah or Hagar, you're a servant of Sarah where have you come from and where are you going why are you out here on the road you should be back doing your job with Sarah well where has she gone wrong well we saw it up in verse 4 she looked down with pride on Sarah she dishonored her mistress and that was wrong and that sin led to her being abused and now fleeing into the wilderness now Sarah wasn't right to abuse her, but Hagar shouldn't think that her sin had no effect. It was wrong of her to look down on her mistress, and so God sets her on the right path. Verse 9, the angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. In other words, Hagar, you have to cut out the false pride. You have to cut out the dishonor. That's going to put you in a bad place, even

39:03 according to genesis 12 3 so return and instead of looking down on her in pride submit to her so he confronts her and that friends is an important point to realize he confronts her before he tells her that she's going to have a son he calls her to repent before he pronounces blessing which is always the way it is with god it's how each and every one of us comes to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It's when we're confronted by the Holy Spirit with our sin, and we see the guilt of it, and we see the grossness of it, and we say, Lord, save me from this. Being confronted with your sin is not fun, but it is what leads to restoration and salvation.

39:51 So friend, maybe even today, somehow the Lord is confronting you with some sin, maybe for the first time in your life. Don't run from that. Stare it in the face. See it for what it is, and then you'll understand why we Christians are so happy to have a Savior. My prayer is that you'll see your sin and come to him like so many others have. God confronts before he comforts, always. Second, I want you to notice here that sin has long consequences. Sin has long consequences, sometimes even after God shows grace sin has long consequences even after sometimes God shows grace so look at what God look at specifically what God promises in verses 11 and 12 the angel of the Lord said to her behold you're pregnant she already knew that and shall bear a son you shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction he shall be a wild donkey of a man his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. Now Hagar takes this

40:56 as a huge blessing to her. She's very happy. I have been seen by the Lord. I've been cared for or seen by the one who takes care of me. She takes it as a huge blessing, but it's really kind of mixed, isn't it? It's really sort of mixed. You're going to have a baby and he's going to grow up to be a man, yay, but he's going to be a filthy jackass who fights with everybody all the time. It's just, it's a mixed bag. And that's exactly what happens over the years and the centuries. The descendants of Abraham and Jacob constantly find themselves in conflict with the descendants of Ishmael.

41:32 And the point is, sin has consequences. So even when God shows grace here to Hagar and prevents the worst effects of Abraham's sin against her, it still has knock-on effects for a long time. Look, sin is never a small thing. It is always destructive. It always causes shockwaves that are much larger and longer than you would have expected. So, friends, don't trifle with it. Don't play with it.

42:04 Some of you play with your sin like you've found a little baby dragon. And you don't understand that that thing's going to grow up one day and burn you to a crisp. Don't play with it. Don't trifle it. don't let it have any foothold at all in your life you will regret it sin has long consequences third God sees those who are seen by no one else God sees those who are seen by no one else he sees those who are invisible to everybody else that's what Hagar realizes at the end verse 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've seen him who looks after me. And therefore the well was called Bir Lahai Roy. As you look down in the footnotes, you'll see that that means the well of the living one who sees me. So three different times she talks about God seeing me, seeing me, seeing me. It's a huge thing to her.

43:00 She just seems stunned by the fact that God has noticed her. And why is that? Because nobody's ever noticed her before. Not really. They've ordered her around. They've used her in various ways. She's done some good things. She's done some probably bad things, but nobody's ever really cared. She's just a servant. She's a nobody. The only time that somebody had noticed her, that she could actually be useful in a special way, it was Sarah. And that was to use her for Sarah's own purposes. And then when she did exactly what Sarah wanted, Sarah turned on her. All her life, she was just nothing. She was first a payment to settle a debt or to get rid of somebody. That's what she was at first when Pharaoh gave her to Abraham. She was a tool to be used all her life until right now.

43:49 Until right now. Now God has seen her and it is astonishing to her. I know that's the same with many of you. You feel like you've never been seen. Not really. I had a membership interview this week where somebody told me a story about a youth leader, I think. I don't remember the detail, but I think it was a youth leader, maybe just an older friend who gave her a book. And every page of that book had a little handwritten note on it from this person to her.

44:25 And the person I was doing the membership interview with said something like, I was just amazed that she would take the time to do that for me. She noticed that I existed. Friend, the glory of the gospel is that you are seen by the God who sees. You matter to him. You're created in his image. Why do you keep running from him? He sees you.

44:57 He notices. He cares. He wants you in his presence. Why do you keep running? Come to Jesus Christ. And be saved. Be seen for all eternity. You know, there's another side to that coin, too, Christian. See others. Show the love of God. Don't be so wrapped up in your own personal social project when you come here to church that you don't notice the person who's standing alone with their back against the wall scrolling through their phone.

45:33 If somebody's got their back against the wall, scrolling through their phone, that does not mean that they're doing something important and that you shouldn't interrupt them. It means they don't have anybody to talk to. So go talk to them. Go tell them that God loves them. Go tell them that you have seen them. So there's two questions from the very beginning. What are the results of acting in unbelief? Chaos. What is God's response to unbelief?

46:09 Well, right now, it's an invitation to you to come to him for forgiveness. On the last day, it will be judgment. What are you going to do with that now? Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are a good God, a gracious and merciful God who loves us and who sees us and invites us to be with you for all eternity despite our sin and rebellion against you.

46:41 Oh Lord, we pray that there wouldn't be a single person here today whose heart you would leave dead. Father, bring hearts to life. Cause them to see the glory of the gospel of Jesus and come to him for salvation. We pray that in Jesus' name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.