Who do you blame when things go wrong in your life?
Let’s look at the text and then draw some lessons from them.
Gen 16:1 “Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.”
Masters had absolute rights over their servants.
Gen 16:2 “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.”
God had promised to make Abram a great nation, but it didn’t seem to be happening. Sarai looked at the situation and decided she could make it happen. So Sarai gave Hagar to Abram’s bed to be a surrogate mother. Surrogation through adultery it has been called. Abram heard the idea and went along with it.
As is much publicized and taught, this was acting ahead of God’s will and not waiting on God’s timing. It was taking things into their own hands and not trusting God to work it out. That is always a mistake.
I want to remind you of something to give Sarai the benefit of the doubt. God had never spoken to her. Just to Abram. For all she knew, her crazy husband and his invisible God kept talking about a child she couldn’t have.
Gen 16:3-4 “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. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.”
OK, he did it. He went through with it.
This was in a day when most men had multiple wives. Rulers had wives and then they had more concubines (or girlfriends, so to speak).
Let me tell you something briefly. Just because everybody is doing it doesn’t mean you are going to get away with it as a child of God. God’s expectations of us and His call for righteousness isn’t effected by social norms.
This didn’t go over well, either, despite the common practices of this society.
Gen 16:5 “And Sarai 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!’"
I am sure you can see what I see, and hear what I hear in this. “Abram, this is all your fault.”
There are a lot of views as to what the problem was in this scripture. Some say the relationship between Hagar and Sarai was changing. Hagar was promoted, raised from servant of Sarai to Abram’s second wife. This promotion wasn’t handled well by Hagar, as she quit respecting Sarai and obeying her. She may have looked at herself as more valuable than Sarai because she could get pregnant and bear a son.
Others say that Hagar resented the position she was placed in. She was cast into the bed of Abram and got pregnant, none of which was her choice. Her life and dreams were over, perhaps she had an eye for male servant and this ruined her chances with him.
Still others say that this problem was inside Sarai only. There is no record of Hagar being a problem, just Sarai’s word that she was. Maybe she couldn’t stand the thought of her failure and looking at a pregnant Hagar constantly reminded her. Maybe her resentment imagined Hagar’s resentment, hearing spite in everything said, and seeing it in everything that was done.
We don’t know, but can only speculate.
Abram then responds to his wife, validating her unique position with him as his main squeeze.
Gen 16:6 “But Abram said to Sarai, ‘Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.’ Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.”
Abram said, “Sarai, you are my wife. What we did was a mistake. She is your servant. It is your choice how to deal with this.”
Sarai decided she needed to crack down on Hagar. So she cracked down hard.
Hagar decided she had better get away, so she ran away.
Now, that is as far as we are going into the story today. There are national and historic consequences of this story that we will cover later, but not tonight. I just want us to focus tonight on one thing.
Why was it Abram’s fault?
I. Failed Authority.
Flash back to Adam. Eve was deceived and Adam took and ate. It was Eve’s idea, but Adam’s responsibility. See the resemblance?
Sarai was saying, “Abram, you are my husband. You should have told me ‘No’. ”
This is always true with authority. It is the difficulty of authority. Adam could have acted with authority and integrity, but what does he do? He took and ate.
What did Abram do when Sarai offered her handmade as a surrogate mother and not wait on God’s plan? He took the handmade into his bed and slept with her.
As a husband, Sarai was expecting Abram to protect her, keep her from making a mistake and not facilitating her error. Instead, he enabled the sin, made it complete, and failed to protect the family from trouble.
The principle that was violated by this sin was Abram’s allowing leadership from below. This was not an example of servant leadership, but an example of failed leadership. Eve led from below. Sarai led from below. But Adam and Abram allowed it.
We have all been in situations where we believe we know more or are more spiritual than the leader. This is a dangerous position; Study the life and rebellions around Moses and you will learn that.
When someone in leadership is looking down for guidance, they cannot be looking up. A godly leader looks to God for direction, and does not seek direction from below.
He receives counsel from every direction. Let’s get a complete picture, here.
Pro 11:14 “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”
Pro 15:22 “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.”
But the Bible and history is replete with instances when multitudes of counselors were wrong. A godly leader listens to the counsel of his people, but looks to God for validation of direction.
Proverbs 19:20-21 “Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”
Did you catch that? Counselors and advisors are good, but only when the authority checks the advice with the will and purpose of God.
1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
II. Secondly, it was failed expectations.
Consider Abram’s pressure. Every husband in those days wanted a son to extend his posterity.
I believe something Abram was doing was putting a constant pressure on Sarai. Somehow, she was feeling pressure to produce a child and grew weary of living under it.
Your expectations can destroy other people. When you chose to follow Christ, you gave up your expectations, but that is one of the last things to die (Luke 9:23). Yet, too often, we want to follow Christ and learn of Him, but we still want life as we desire it. We forget that this can destroy others, but Abram’s expectations were killing Sarai.
Expectations are defeating, period. I have counseled more dejected, defeated Christians because of failed expectations than for any other topic. Church workers come into a position expecting multitudinous blessings and no trouble. They expect no opposition from among God’s people and growth of their ministry. Pastors leave the ministry because it wasn’t as fun as they expected. Missionaries quit the ministry because it hurts so badly. People let you down, trouble comes and an exit door opens. So many are tempted to step through it.
Marriages end with shattered expectations. Couples want to go into marriage like a fairy tale, living happily ever after. They expect their fulfilling careers, their bungalow house with the picket fence, their 2.5 children and a growing retirement fund. Their children are supposed to be the brightest in their classes, the most polite, best athletes and obedient to perfection. It ends up with discouragement and defeat. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
Every day when Abram and Sarai were sitting after breakfast drinking coffee, Sarai could see the sadness and disappointment in Abram’s eyes. It was personal. She had failed him and failed to meet his expectations in life.
I believe, had Abram trusted God’s promise and God’s timing, Sarai would have seen confidence and satisfaction in his eyes. If you do not surrender your expectations of life to God, you will hurt those you love.
Did you catch that? If you do not surrender your expectations of life to God, you will miss God’s plan for your life and hurt those you love. You will drag them down with your sad, defeated life and less-than-sunny disposition.
Ill. A young psychology student serving in the Army decided to test a theory. Drawing kitchen duty, he was given the job of passing out apricots at the end of the chow line. He asked the first few soldiers that came by, "You don't want any apricots, do you?" Ninety percent said "No." Then he tried the positive approach: "You do want apricots, don't you?" About half answered, "Uh, yeah. I'll take some." Then he tried a third test, based on the fundamental either/or selling technique. This time he asked, "One dish of apricots or two?" And in spite of the fact that soldiers don't like Army apricots, 40 percent took two dishes and 50 percent took one!
III. Failed Responsibility.
It was Abram’s fault because Sarai did not live up to her responsibility? OK, we can’t let Sarai off the hook completely.
“May the wrong done to me be on you!” She is saying, “Abram, this is all your fault. I am faultless in this.” She even evokes her theology into it to justify her position. “May the LORD judge between you and me!” In other words, “Ask God. He is on my side.”
Excuse me for laughing, but I am not laughing at Sarai. I’m laughing at me. Isn’t this what I do when I make a mistake? I dress it up the best I can to make it look reasonable and rational. And if I can put enough lipstick on that pig, I can try to make it look righteous.
Sarai did what I try to do every day; justify my actions and decisions with theology. I know I can’t float them past God that way, but I might fool somebody. Usually, to try this, I must really explain it with many words.
Pro 10:19 “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
Notice how Abram responded.”
He could have said, “Wait a minute here, darling. This was your idea. I did this only to make you happy. You can’t put this on me!”
But he didn’t. Instead, he saw his wrong and determined it was wrong enough to take responsibility. This is the hardest thing to do in leadership, especially when it is easy to focus on what others did wrong.
I have heard, “Well, I was wrong when I did this, and I should have done this instead of that. But you! What you did was unforgivable.”
I think this is the attitude Jesus was talking about when He said, “"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.” Matthew 7:1-5.
Jesus clearly taught that in conflict, our first responsibility is to focus on our error. We need to ask, “What did I do wrong and am I responsible in any way for this problem?”
Abram did that, and Sarai did not. But that wasn’t Abram’s responsibility to point out. When Sarai evoked God into the situation (“God by my witness), Abram knew He was involved and He would judge rightly. That is enough when we surrender to Him.
We must learn to take our full responsibility in our troubles, or we will have a hard lesson to learn.
Franklin P. Jones in The Wall Street Journal said, “Be thankful for bad luck. Without it, you'd have to blame yourself.” Our tendency is to blame everything, including bad luck, and everyone else, but not in ourselves.
May God give us strength and wisdom to face our responsibility for our error completely and let Him clean it up for us (1 John 1:9).
