The Mistake (Genesis part 28)
Text: Genesis 16:1 – 16
By: Ken McKinley
(Read Text)
Now as we’ve been reading about Abraham, we’ve seen him go through high points and low points. We’ve seen him walking in faith and we’ve seen his faith falter from time to time. Last Sunday we talked about how it was with Abraham that we first see the doctrine of justification by faith alone. How Abraham believed God and God accounted to him as righteousness. So Abram’s kind of been on a spiritual high plane… First he trusted God and let Lot go whichever direction he wanted, then he rescued Lot from the wicked kings. Then he refused to take the gifts of the king of Sodom, but paid tithes to Melchizedek. God declares him righteous and we saw the covenant of grace. So by all accounts, Abram’s doing pretty well in his walk with God… but that’s about to change.
So… first of all; we see in verses 1 & 2 that Abram makes a big mistake. We know it’s a mistake from the consequences we see later on, we know it’s a mistake from what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 4 where he says, “The son born unto the bondwoman was according to the flesh…” And we know it’s a mistake from history. And what this portion of Scripture shows us is that God is sovereign. We’re not. And sometimes we don’t like that.
The promise hadn’t been fulfilled, so Sarai comes up with a plan. What she decides to do was actually pretty common in those days. But it was also… and still is also a direct violation of the “one flesh” principle that God had set down in Genesis 2. So even though this was a common custom for people to do what Abram and Sarai did, it violated the creation ordinances that God set forth in Genesis 1 and 2. In-other-words, it may have been the law of the land, and it may have seemed right to the culture that Abram was living in, but it was wrong in the eyes of God. Now I don’t think I need to go into detail how that principle applies to us today. I think ya’ll all have a pretty good idea of how it applies.
So again; Paul tells us in Galatians 4 that the son of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, but the son of the free woman was born according to the promise. What Paul meant by that was that Ishmael was the result of the will of man, but Isaac was the product of Abraham and Sarah trusting in the promise of God. To put that another way… we could say that Ishmael was the result of Abram and Sarai’s failure to trust in the Lord. And what’s really sad about this, is that Abram and Sarai know that they are trying to circumvent God’s way of doing things.
Look at verse 2 (Read). See! Sarai says, “The LORD has restrained me from bearing children.” She knew that it was God who was keeping her from bearing children. That was part of God’s plan to show that it wasn’t about the will of man, but of God who shows grace and mercy. But Abram and Sari begin to justify their behavior, and rationalize it. And that’s what sin does. It’s deceptive. We tell ourselves, “I know God wouldn’t want me to do this, but maybe… just this once, He’ll make an exception.” We fool ourselves and say, “Well I’d make an exception for myself in this circumstance, surely God would too.”
So what we’re seeing here in our text is that God’s sovereignty is conflicting with Abram and Sarai’s desires. And there’s consequences for their sin. Let’s look at it (read vs. 3-6).
Everyone involved in this mess comes out looking bad.
First of all; Hagar gloats and is filled with pride. Sarai is bitter about it and she blames it all on Abram. In verse 5 she says, “My wrong be upon you!” In-other-words, she’s saying, “This is all your fault!”
And then there’s Abram, playing the role of the complacent husband saying, “Do whatever you want to Hagar, it’ll be fine.”
So in verses 7 – 14 we see the results.
Sarai mistreats Hagar and Hagar runs away into the wilderness. Verse 7 tells us that the Angel of the Lord finds her by a spring of water in the wilderness. Abram didn’t do anything to stop this. Kind of reminds me of Adam and Eve in the Garden, Adam was there with Eve, but he didn’t do anything. He and Abram would rather take the heat from God than from their wives. So not only do we see a violation of the “one flesh” principle, we also see a violation of the “man being the head of the house” principle.
Sarai was cruel; she chases Hagar away, but God cares for the outcasts. Hagar was defenseless, out in the wilderness all alone, and pregnant to boot.
Again; this place that they called the “wilderness” was south of Israel… that little peninsula of Egypt. It was a barren desert. There were bands of thieves and robbers that would roam around out there. Food would be scarce and hard to find. So she was in trouble. But the Angel of the Lord shows up. Now that shows us something about the character of God. His plan of redemption is through the Seed of Abraham, but God is still good and merciful.
There’s kind of a parallel story to this in the Book of Joshua. In Joshua chapter 9 when the Israelites are trying to take the Promised Land, and they encounter the Gibeonites. They enter into a covenant with the Gibeonites before asking them where they come from. Later on they found out that the Gibeonites were a part of the Canaanites and the people of Israel immediately wanted to break the covenant with them. But God told Joshua and the leaders of Israel not to break the covenant. He basically told them that, “They have been brought into covenant with me, and I will protect them.” 400 years later when king Saul began persecuting the Gibeonites, God sent a plague against Israel and Saul. So even when God’s people fail to live up to the covenant, God Himself is faithful.
Ok… let me get back on the subject here. The Angel of the Lord comes to Hagar…
Look at verses 9 – 16 (Read).
So Hagar is told to go back to Sarah, to submit to her. She’s told that she’s going to have a son, and what kind of person he’s going to be, and in verse 13 Hagar says, “You are a God who sees. How am I even alive after this encounter?” Now I want you to just think about this for a minute. Hagar was from Egypt. She probably wasn’t a believer in God; at least not Abraham’s God. And the one person she knew who did believe in God was the father of her child, and he had just kicked her to the curb, so to speak. Now you won’t find this behavior being advocated in any of those “how to witness to your friends and neighbors” books. Abraham made a huge mistake! He allowed Sarai to send Hagar away, but the God of Abraham tracks her down in the wilderness and shows compassion. Hagar says “You are the God who sees…” and in-case you didn’t know, the idea of God “seeing” in the Old Testament is the same as God “caring.” The idea was – if He sees, then He cares, and that’s what Hagar is realizing here. She feels cared for by God, even if she isn’t cared for by Abraham and Sarah.
And the lesson we can take from this is that even when we or someone else seems marginal to God’s purposes, and insignificant in the great scheme of things, we still have an obligation to them as God’s people. God calls us to be an ambassador of His love for the defenseless, for the unimportant, for the insignificant. God shows Hagar that He cares.
Now not everything He tells her was good. He tells her what kind of man her son Ishmael was going to be. He says that he’ll be a wild man, that he’s going to be the reason for wars, and disputes. And history bears this out and proves it to be true. The descendants of Ishmael would eventually settle in Saudi Arabia, particularly the northern parts. Which interestingly enough, is where Osama Bin Laden came from, and it’s where the Palestinians came from. Don’t believe everything you hear in the media. Prior to Israel becoming a nation again, the Palestinians were mostly found in Saudi Arabia, but they were kicked out because they were causing too much trouble. Then they tried to settle in Iraq and were kicked out, then they tried to settle in Syria, and were kicked out, then they tried to settle in Egypt, and were kicked out. But after Israel was reestablished as a nation, they were sent there to settle and harass the Jews. The other Muslim nations didn’t even want them. Now if that’s not a fulfillment of verse 12 then I don’t know what is. Now there are some myths going on out there that say the Palestinians are actually the Philistines, but that’s not the case. The Philistines were wiped out about 3000 years ago. Prior to 1948 these people were just called by a variety of names, but after 1948 they took the name Palestinian in honor of the Philistines, not because they were descended from them. In-fact; some scholars say that Deuteronomy 32:21 mentions the Palestinians as a means of judgment upon Israel for their unbelief and idolatry. In speaking of Israel, it says, “They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God; They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols. But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation; I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.” So God’s prophecy of Ishmael and his descendants comes true.
Finally; when we come to verses 15 and 16 of our text; we see that Ishmael is born, and we see that Abram is still waiting for the promise. Except; now there’s probably… most likely, a lot more tension, strife, resentment and hard feelings in his camp than there was before he tried to help God out. Disobedience to God always brings these things into our lives. And so Abram tried to do things his way, and it didn’t help the situation one bit. God was still going to have to do a miracle to bring about the promised son, and we can take a lesson from that. Sometimes God has us in a place in our lives, or our circumstances or situations, where all we can do be still and see the salvation of the Lord. Sometimes I think that’s exactly what He wants us to do. We sometimes we maybe think a little to highly of ourselves and fool ourselves into thinking that not only does God need our help, but that He’s lucky to have us on His team. So the point is that God is fully capable of bringing about His promise and purposes with or without us. We have to trust in that and in Him. When His ways are clear… like His ordained means of saving the lost through the sharing of the Gospel; we have to be quick to be obedient… but when His ways aren’t so clear. There’s nothing wrong with waiting on the Lord and seeking His will and asking for clarification. Where we can get into trouble is in thinking that inactivity is the same as waiting on the Lord and trying to do it ourselves, and in our strength. So let’s pray that the Lord would be our guide and that we would trust Him as we should. PRAYER
