THE GOD WHO REALLY SEES (GENESIS 16:1-16)
Are you suffering, weak, or troubled?
At the lowest point of my ministry, I took a course co-taught by two professors who required all students, mainly pastors, to stay together in a retreat center for two weeks, and every night there was a designated time for singing, fellowship and prayer. A few testimonies stuck in my mind. A Midwest Lutheran pastor was so frustrated, shaken and disgusted at how his ministry was going. He was a popular pastor. People lined up to see him every day in that small rural community and they appeared on his doorstep for something as minor as fixing a toilet seat. On the denominational front, he was exhausted from ugly politics battling feminist groups, gay rights, abortion supporters and other interest groups. He had thought about taking a long break, especially the last few months, when he would get up early Sunday morning before dawn, writing his sermon before the congregation arrived to avert a major embarrassment.
On the last day, another pastor confessed dramatically for the first time in his life that he was sexually abused as a kid. One of the professors talked about how he often reacted angrily and negatively to his wayward son’s up and down battle with drugs, but the turning point in the unhappy father and son relationship was when he felt God turning the question upon him: “What about your anger?”
At the end of the two weeks, the Lutheran pastor echoed the determination of the group when he said, “When I first arrived, I was determined to go home after this class and quit my church. But after these two weeks’ fellowship, prayer and testimonies, I think I’d rather stay in my own church.”
Do you know God understands your misery more than you think? Abram and Sarai had a maid by the name of Hagar; however, all of them were dissatisfied with their conditions. Sarai was the pushy wife who was paranoid for an heir, Abram was the passive husband who blindly followed his wife’s ill-advised instructions and Hagar was the ambitious maid who discovered a way out of her outsider status.
Sarai and Abram were not getting any younger. Abram was eighty five years old (16:16) and Sarai was seventy four (17:17), but Sarai had a plan. How about taking a concubine for her husband so that a baby by her husband and the maid may be considered Sarai’s child (16:1-3)? In the end, no one was happy, especially Hagar. Hagar lived a more miserable life than before because things in the new family worked out quite differently than she expected. She was not as important once she got there.
What happens when we use human solutions to replace God’s way to a better life? How does God want us to live even when the quality of life is not ideal or improving? Why is it better to trust God even at the worst of times?
Living Your Life Through Others is Fooling Yourself and Others
16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; 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 maidservant 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 servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” (Gen 16:1-5)
Sarai’s mistaken notion was that she could live her life through Hagar, that she could build a future on an abnormal relationship and that her husband and the family would be happier and complete with kids at home. Abram and Hagar did not protest the plan. Abram, on the one hand, wanted her wife happy, their marriage to work and a baby to stabilize the family and calm things down. Hagar, on the other hand, thought her status would be upgraded, her fortune would change and motherhood would satisfy her. In the end, all the participants were fooling themselves and others.
A friend knew a young couple who was a perfect match for each other and their home was the picture of an ideal family. The couple knew each other since teenagers. They were married after their careers quickly took off and both had enviable, perfect jobs. She was a capable counselor and he was good in sales. They had two smart and lovely kids - the oldest 10, fast-tracked to the top of their profession and bought a nice home in a middle-class neighborhood. They were compatible, genial and successful. My friend’s respect, admiration and idealization of the romance story were set. One day, it all went wrong. The husband came home, told the wife that he was seeing someone else and wanted a divorce.
The strangest thing was hearing my friend’s words. My friend went home after hearing the news for the first time, finding no sleep and having no peace until the person turn to God in prayer, saying: “Lord, how foolish I was. Please forgive me for adoring what they had!”
Building a life through others is foolishness because we ignore people’s problems and magnify our own problems, thereby inheriting and creating more problems. When we desire the lives of other people, we foolishly ignore the price they pay for success, the constant sacrifice they make to stay at the top and the constant vigilance over everything - their possessions, kids and competitors.
Hagar imagined a better life was ahead of her. She thought, “Isn’t it better to be part of the family instead of being a foreigner, an outsider and a slave?” Abram and Sarai, also, foolishly and naively thought that the exotic things they had received from Pharaoh, including Hagar (Gen 12:16), would improve their standard of living.
To their surprise, they inherited more problems. Before they were fairly dissatisfied, now they were downright miserable. No one was happy when the plan succeeded. None of them were the same. Sadly, it was the point of no return. Their lives were depressing. Hagar was conceited, Sarai was contentious and the conspiracy failed.
Is there something you sought that you did not work for? Have you prayed earnestly about it? Or think long and hard about it?
Living a Life For Oneself is Fighting Yourself and Others
6 “Your servant 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, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. (Gen 16:6-8)
A traveler nearing a great city asked an old man seated by the road, “What are the people like in this city?” The man replied, “What were they like where you came from?”
“A terrible lot,” the traveler reported. “Mean, untrustworthy, detestable in all respects.” “Ah,” said the old person. “You will find them the same in the city ahead.”
Scarcely had the first traveler gone on his way when another stopped to inquire about the people in the city before him. Again, the old person asked about the people in the place the traveler had just left. “They were fine people, honest, industrious, and generous to a fault. I was sorry to leave,” declared the second traveler. Responded the wise one, “So you will find them in the city ahead.” (Leadership Summer 96)
It’s been said, a man’s worst enemy will never do him the harm he does himself. (Scholem Alechem- Yiddish Tales, cited in Christianity Today 8/11/97)
Hagar was fighting and hopping mad. Sarai gave her a hard time when the pregnant Hagar began to despise her mistress (v 4). This time, Hagar had it. Nothing had changed or improved. Sarai was still her owner. Things were worse than before. Sarai was now her rival and she punished Hagar physically like never before. Hagar fought her mistress’ contempt, jealousy and mistreatment, and decided to run away.
In running away (v 6), Hagar fought herself just as hard as she fought Sarai. In truth, her three negative attitudes hurt her more than it hurt Sarai. First, Hagar was understandably defiant. Her mentality at this point was: “I have something to do, I have somewhere to go, and I will make it on my own.” However, she was doing nothing new, going nowhere fast and pursuing nothing promising. All she did was to return to her pagan roots. Bible scholars tell us that Shur was a place between Beersheba to Egypt and Hagar was midway to Egypt (16:7), where she was previously regarded, treated and sold as a slave.
Next, escaping was a poor way to handle Hagar’s problems. No wonder the world’s longest running and most intense battles in history are fought between the Jewish people and the Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, Hagar’s son. The two kin nations till today do not settle their differences well.
Blame, also, had never escaped Hagar’s mind. Note that when the angel asked Hagar a “where” question – where she had come from, and where she was going, Hagar responded with a “who” answer. “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” Hagar answered, dragging Sarai into the matter and equation.
Have you fought senselessly against others and yourself? Have you prayed to God for guidance instead? Have you asked Him to help you correct the situation when you would rather take flight, blame others or strike back?
Living a Life in God is Forgiving Yourself and Others
9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the LORD also said to her: “You are now with child and you will have 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. (Gen 16:9-16)
Han Xin was a military strategist who rendered outstanding service towards the founding of the Han Dynasty (207 B.C. - A.D. 221). When he was young his family was poor and he was looked down upon. Once, a young man humiliated him in front of a crowd of people. He said to Han Xin, “Although you are strongly built and like to carry a sword, you are inwardly a coward. If you are not afraid to die, come and try to stab me with your sword. If you are afraid to die, then crawl under my legs.”
Han Xin looked at the man for a long while and then bent down and crawled through the man’s parted legs. All the people in the street laughed at him, thinking he was a coward. Later, when Han Xin became the Prince of Chu, he summoned to an interview the young man who had humiliated him and appointed him to an official post. To all the (bewildered) civil and military officials, Han Xin said, “This man is a good fighter. I could have killed him when he humiliated me. But there is nothing praiseworthy in killing him. That was why I endured this humiliation and achieved what I’ve achieved today.” (Best Chinese Idioms Vol. 2, Situ, Tan 163-64 Hai Feng Pub. Co. Hong Kong, 1988)
Warren Wiersbe said, “Life is about 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.”
God told Hagar the secret of making a bleak, hopeless and miserable situation tolerable. He persuaded Hagar to return to her mean mistress and submit to her. Though trouble erupted again more than fourteen years later (Gen 16:15, 21:5, 8), specifically when Isaac was weaned, usually at two to three years old, but Ishmael was already a 16- or 17-year old teenager by then. Matthew Henry even suggested that the Jews weaned their young about three to five years old.
The greatest tragedy in life is to have no one to believe in, to turn to or call on. God’s presence at the expecting Hagar’s lowest point gave her courage, reason and motivation to live. God had seen her misery, heard her cries and calmed her fears. He would not stand idly by when those who are lost, abandoned or helpless.
Hagar’s worry for her son was taken care of. God said to her: “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.” (Gen 16:12) The next time we see Ishmael, he was the one giving his half-brother Isaac a hard time (Gen 21:9). Hagar’s fear that her son would be bullied was unfounded.
Conclusion: Have you turned to our Lord Jesus Christ when you are suffering, weak and troubled? He was oppressed and afflicted (Is 53:7), and so He can empathize with those who are in distress (Is 63:9). God is just. Those who trouble you will have to answer to Him. (2 Thess 1:6) God’s presence and work in our lives is our reason for hope. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 says, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Cor 4:8-9)
Do you believe God knows your heartaches, understands your situation, and hears your prayers, cries, and tears? We have a God who truly sees. He will answer you when you seek Him, obey Him, and trust Him.
More importantly, have you asked the God of all comfort to use you to comfort those who are in trouble? (2 Cor 1:3-4) Is there who is in need that you can offer help and support? Someone more disadvantaged and disheartened than you?
Victor Yap
Other sermons in the series and other sermon series:
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